Update from David Lidington MP
Posted by David Lidington, MP for Aylesbury, at 11:30, Tue 22 April 2008:
First of all my apologies for not sending you an update for quite a while now. Since I last wrote, my Front Bench responsibilities within the Opposition have changed. Last year, a deal between Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein made it possible for devolved government, based on power sharing, to be revived in Northern Ireland. Apart from policing and criminal justice, the Executive and Assembly at Stormont now have responsibility for practically all public services in the Province. Soon afterwards, David Cameron asked me to move to the Foreign Affairs team as deputy to William Hague and to take specific responsibility for the Middle East and for various global issues like the United Nations and non-proliferation. Although I got to love Northern Ireland over a period of almost fours years in which I had been the Spokesman for the Opposition, it was the right time to make a move and the new brief is fascinating.
In the last six months, I have been to China (including to Tibet – which has proved very helpful in understanding the background to the appalling events of recent days), Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Saudi Arabia. I am hoping to visit Qatar, Iran and other countries later this year. The role involves a vast amount of reading, trying to get to grips with the histories and personalities involved and meetings with numerous foreign leaders visiting London.
Within the constituency, the Government’s plans for large scale housing expansion in Aylesbury have continued to take up a large amount of my time. There has been a lot of correspondence from constituents and a fair number of meetings about the proposals to build 9000 houses to the south of Aylesbury and various concerns about developments within the town centre. I remain very concerned that there has been inadequate planning by the Government for better transport links and public service provision alongside the proposed new housing.
In the local NHS, the news has been mixed. Stoke Mandeville Hospital seems to have made good progress in combating hospital acquired infections and of course we have now at last got some national statistics which suggest that the shocking outbreak of clostridium difficile at Stoke a couple of years ago was not an isolated incident but part of a much bigger, national problem. I have also been dealing with a fair number of cases from constituents involving demands for primary care services where patients’ needs are running up against the intractable financial problems with which Buckinghamshire Primary Care Trust is struggling. The PCT is trying to reduce a large deficit in its finances. What I have notices is an increasing difficulty over access to certain services like orthodontics and children’s speech and language therapy. I am also dealing with a number of distressing cases where families are battling for a seriously ill and disabled relative to have NHS rather than means tested social services funding.
In the south of the constituency, Stokenchurch and Ibstone were threatened with the loss of a key transport link when the Highways Agency announced that road bridge over the M40 motorway would have to be closed completely for many months for major repair work. I have supported the campaign led by Stokenchurch and Ibstone Parish Councils to persuade the Highways Agency to think again. It now looks as if they will provide some kind of bailey bridge to allow vehicles to travel across the motorway while the repair and reconstruction works are carried out.
Looking ahead, two important issues are going to affect local people during the middle of 2008. The first is the Government’s plan to close about a third of all sub prime post offices in the country. The detailed proposals for Buckinghamshire are due to be published in May or June. There will be a limited number of weeks of public consultation and although the Post Office and the Government seem to have been very rigid in other parts of the country in refusing to reconsider closures, there is a chance at least of being able to argue the powers that be to have a change a heart. So I would encourage everybody to respond when the detailed proposals for our area are announced.
Public consultation is already underway on proposals underway on proposals by the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) to re-route a number of flight paths over Buckinghamshire. It is not so much traffic from Heathrow but that from Luton which has triggered these proposed changes. It is swings and roundabouts for my constituency. NATS wants to shift aircraft away from settlements like Princes Risborough and Wendover and have aircraft fly over more sparsely populated areas. In other words, the tranquillity of the Chilterns AONB would suffer but residents in nearby towns would benefit. There are full details on the NATS website and links to their public consultation to which you can respond online.
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