Democracy in the Middle East

 

On Monday, during the Conservative Conference, I gave a speech to a fringe meeting, chaired by Nick Soames MP and organised by the Kurdistan Regional Government.  My remarks are summarised below:

After the Iraq war, it was often argued that the Middle East wasn’t “ready for democracy”. The Guardian for example implied this about Iraq in 2003.

But this is a nonsensical argument, as it seems to suggest that some people because of their background are not entitled to democracy, and the example of Kurdistan shows all too clearly how wrong this is.

The removal of Saddam Hussein not only saved the Kurds from being destroyed by genocide, but also brought about an independent, democratic and free nation in the shape of Kurdistan.

As Vice-Chair of the All-Party Group for Kurdistan, I have visited twice, and have seen firsthand the evidence of genocide. Despite regional instability, autonomous Kurdistan was established in 2003. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) makes its own laws, controls its own army, and decides its own pace of economic development.  In contrast to most other parts of Iraq, KRG is relatively terrorist-free.

Ultimately, a democracy can be judged by its respect for property rights, religious tolerance, the rule of law, equality towards women, equal access to education, a free press, and a vigorous political opposition.

It’s  worth looking at how far Kurdistan fulfills some of these criteria:

PROPERTY RIGHTS

The draft Kurdistan constitution (it's still a draft) includes several articles concerning the protection of minority, political and property rights. In Ankawa, the main Christian town in Erbil governorate, there is even special heritage protection for the property owned by the local community.

RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE

The Kurdish regional parliament has now officially recognised the rights of other minorities such Turkmen, and Assyrians, and these are reflected in the electoral system.In fact, Kurdistan is one of the only safe-havens for Christians and Jews in the region.

Whilst Christians are being murdered and persecuted across Iraq and Iran, in Kurdistan they are welcomed.  The Kurdish President has even invited Christian refugees to take up safe haven in his region.

THE RULE OF LAW

Crime is very low compared to neighbouring Iraq, and the UK has helped the Kurdish Police authorities to build forensic skills, rather than relying the traditional “confession-based” policing. The Kurdish judiciary are independent, and have defended the right of free assembly during the Arab Spring.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

On women’s rights, the Kurdistan Parliament has recently passed tough laws against domestic violence. This made female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and child labour all criminal offences for the first time.

FREE ACCESS TO EDUCATION

As the Kurdish economy is booming, universities too are flourishing, and despite some set-backs there is a real focus on improving education. Illiteracy has fallen from thirty-seven to  to just sixteen percent since 2003, and is now at about the same level as London in 2011.

Kurdistan is a country that has learnt from the past, rather than living in it. Had Saddam stayed in power, it is likely that at some point, the rest of Kurdistan would have been covered with nerve gas - were it not for the first Iraq war and the creation of the Kurdish Safe Havens in 1991-2. (Saddam’s henchmen pledged to “bury them with bulldozers”.)

Some perpetrators of the genocide are even thought to be living in Europe, possibly even in England, having claimed asylum. Inexplicably, the genocide of the Kurds is not recognised as a genocide by the International Community, most notably  the United Nations.

For justice to be done, the UN must fully recognise the murder of the Kurds for the genocide that it was.

The Arab Spring shows that the Middle East is ready for democracy. Of course, it doesn’t mean that it will happen all at once, and there will  bemany upsets along the way. But the people of the Middle East are no different to anyone else. They want bread, but they want freedom also.

You can also see this article HERE.

by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

Cutting the fifty pence rate for higher earners is a political death wish

Tax cutting is as much political as it is economic.  That means that it is no good just to argue the economic case for cutting the fifty pence tax rate without any consideration of the political consequences. 

And the political consequences of such a tax cut - at this point in time during the economic cycle - are enormous. 

At a stroke, it would allow our opponents to re-characterise the Conservatives, as being the party of the rich - for the few, not the many.  The signal that such a tax cut would give to the public - many on average wages of £20,000, struggling with rising prices, would be that Conservatives were looking after vested interests:  not so much a dog whistle - more a full blown trumpet.  It is not hard to imagine the response on our doorsteps, and the leaflets from the Labour Party that would result.

For years, - particularly in the dark days of Opposition - Conservatives allowed themselves to lose the low tax argument. Conservatives and tax cuts came to be synonymous with a belief that were not so much the nasty party, but the party of vested interests. That is what made it so much easier for Gordon Brown to slap on the fifty pence tax in the first place - knowing how hard it would be for a future government to undo.

To win the tax-cutting argument, we need to first prepare the ground, explaining why lower taxes are literally about social justice:  a fool proof mechanism for empowerment.  Then we need to demonstrate that tax cuts are for the the many not the few. That tax cutting is indeed a moral creed designed to help the poor.

So more tax cuts for lower earners - raising the tax threshold even further to eliminate the poverty trap.  Cuts in petrol/diesel taxes which millions of motorists will benefit from. Later, when the deficit is under control - some serious income tax cuts - again strengthening the whole country.

I am not saying we should never reduce the fifty pence rate - but it could be implemented once the economy has recovered. It can only come when the public are convinced that 'tax cuts' and Conservatives mean a fair deal for everyone.

I despair at the fifty pence tax rate becoming the main part of the tax cutting debate. This stuff just plays into the hands of our enemies and those who wish to stereo-type Conservative activists or policy.  All this does is make it harder for us to win a real Conservative majority - so as to implement a real long term tax cutting agenda, without the constraints of the Coalition.

Why not use the language of tax cuts for social justice; lower tax cuts for lower earners; empowerment for all? These would make a much better trumpet sound and give us a real chance of demonstrating that we really are the party of social justice - whatever the socialists might say.

This article has also appeared on Conservative Home and The Commentator.


by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

Figures show motorists are cutting back on fuel so costing the Treasury £1billion in fuel duty in just six months

Figures published today only strengthen my campaign which is calling for lower fuel tax.

Research shows that drivers have reduced their petrol consumption by more than 15 per cent since the credit crunch and the recession.

The AA has calculated that fuel transactions in the first six months of 2011 amounted to 1.7bn litres less than in the same period three years ago.

The AA says the drop in petrol sales can be attributed to the record fuel prices. The high cost of petrol leaves drivers with no option but to use their cars less. Businesses are also cutting back.

According to the research, this fall has cost the Treasury of nearly £1bn in fuel duty between January and June this year and according to recent figures the average motorist in my constituency of Harlow is getting fleeced for £1,700 a year just to fill up the family car. This is one tenth of the average local salary.

The Government defines ‘fuel poverty’ as spending a tenth of your income just heating your home, but what about spending a tenth of your income just driving to work?

With the FairFuel UK campaign, I launched the e-petition - http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/347 - calling for lower fuel taxes. It reached the 100,000 signature mark last Friday (September 30) – the figure needed to trigger a parliamentary debate on the issue.

You can read by article on this issue on the Conservative Home here.

We Must Not Negotiate With Terrorists

Yesterday at Party Conference, I spoke about terrorism and extremism in the UK.

The key points that I made were:

- The story of Islamist extremism in the UK is one of Danegeld, and King Canute. Danegeld, because for too long we have thought that if we appease extremists, this will stop the violence. As the Prime Minister said in his Munich speech: “When a white person holds objectionable views – racism, for example – we rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views have come from someone who isn't white, we've been too cautious, frankly even fearful, to stand up to them. The failure of some to confront the horrors of forced marriage is a case in point.” We see this manifested in our universities, our approach to extremists in the UK, and in battles within Government about who should be banned from Britain. As with all Dane-geld, the policy has failed.

- Second, I want to mention King Canute, because I am not a pessimist. I believe we can turn back the tide. By the end of the Labour Government, Ministers like Hazel Blears and Tony Blair himself had started to take the right approach – although too often they had to fight the status quo, the prevailing logic of the Establishment, which said that Britain’s only hope was to appease the problem. But thanks to the work of many people here, the new Prevent Strategy and the David Cameron’s Munich speech have changed the rules of the game. This Government accepts that appeasement doesn’t work.

- Even Muslim nations think we have let extremism go too far. One story crystalises the problem for me. On a visit to Kurdistan, the Kurdish Prime Minister told me he had been to England, visiting a mosque in the north. He said if he had seen that kind of mosque in Kurdistan he would have shut it down overnight, because of its radicalism and aggression. When a Muslim leader, of a progressive Muslim nation, says that he is uncomfortable with the extremism of some British mosques – Surely, there can be no better description of the problem we face.

ACKNOWLEDGING THE PROBLEM
- There is evidence of radicalisation around us. One of the biggest challenges in this debate, is the inertia of many people who are blind to what is happening, because it has not directly affected their lives. We need to show them that this is not a new problem. In 2006, the Education Secretary set out in Celsius 7/7 how the West had failed to stand up for its liberal values, saying: “The British State does not have the courage to face down the advocates of political Islam. Islamists in Britain scent weakness.” Sadly, evidence of radicalisation on University campuses is old news: in 1997 the Committee of Vice Chancellors warned us about it; in 2006 Anthony Glees warned us again; and last year, MI5 identified more than 39 university campuses as “vulnerable to violent extremism” (according to research by Student Rights and the Henry Jackson Society). For nearly 15 years, the problem has been getting worse.

- This is not just a battle against terrorism. It is a battle of ideas. On one side there is freedom, democracy, religious tolerance, equality for women, property rights, a free press, and the rule of law. And on the other side there is holy jihad, the subjugation of women and minorities, and the aim of re-establishing a Caliphate regime. This is what we have to recognise, that there is a fifth column in our midst.

WHERE THE UK HAS APPEASED EXTREMISM
- Some of our universities have become ‘outposts’ for Middle Eastern dictators. For too long, we have done deals with barbaric regimes, like Saudi Arabia and Libya, for the sake of so-called security and commercial interests. This has slowly crept into a tolerance not just of them, but of their values and ideas: it has become a vicious circle. Student Rights has set out much of the evidence HERE. As the Guardian has said: in 2009, Durham signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with Iran, and Dr. Colin Turner, a member of Durham’s Iranian Studies Centre, later admitted to the Guardian: “Iranian money comes with strings attached, as we have found to our chagrin.” 

- This is classic Entryist tactics. We have to ask: what is in this deal for them? Is it to promote their extremist ideology? What kind of legitimacy are they buying? The amounts of money may be small in comparison with British GDP, or the Defence Budget, but so much of this is about symbolism.

- One of the results is that the UK now exports terrorism, as the new Prevent Strategy notes. Since 1989, terrorism has become one of our most infamous exports, and around 70 British students have been involved in terrorist attacks. Waheed Zahman and Umar Farok Abdulmutalab were both Presidents of Islamic Societies at London Universities. The suicide bomber in Sweden last year was a British university graduate. Prevent paragraph 10.61 says that ONE THIRD of people jailed for Al Qa’ida crimes in the UK have been university graduates. In paragraph 10.66 it goes on to say: “Hizb-ut-Tahrir target specific universities and colleges with the objective of radicalising and recruiting those students.”

- Inevitably some of the old Prevent strategy was hijacked by well-intentioned but ineffective groups. Now, moving on to the extremist groups that surround our universities, I accept that Tony Blair and others had begun to get a real understanding of the problem. But it was wrong to give them taxpayers’ money. In fact, much of the Prevent money was simply wasted: in the Wall Street Journal, Douglas Murray noted how a multicultural food-festival in Oxfordshire received Prevent funds, “as though the residents of Banbury were but one Balti away from detonation”.

- We have allowed extremist groups, or their front organisations, to operate too freely. I welcome the Government proscribing many of the 50 groups on the Home Office list – although there is the problem of hydra’s head, where they change names and pop up again. Too many of these groups are apologists for terrorism: part of the conveyor belt that is not serious about opposing extremism, alongside radical groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

- Whitehall Officials have sometimes been too willing to side with hate-preachers. A year ago, in September 2010, the Daily Telegraph reported that Charles Farr, Director-General for Security and Counter-Terrorism, pledged support for Zakir Naik to enter Britain. This was against the judgement of the Home Secretary (who has taken a firm line), and Mr Farr was suspended following a row in the media.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE
- I welcome the revised Prevent strategy, for two reasons. First, it makes a much clearer distinction between counter-terrorist work, and cultural integration, which is right. Second, it stops the taxpayer funding of extremists. Public money will NO LONGER be provided to extremist groups that do not support the values of democracy, human rights, the rule of law and tolerance.

- If I have one concern, it is that there must be no excuses for inaction. There is a famous saying, that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Sometimes there is a criticism, that the Prevent strategy can read like one of Sir Humphrey’s committees: page after page of debates, discussions, forums, learning seminars, general education, conferences, training... Yes, it is important to consult people. But this must not become an excuse for inaction.

- We now need zero tolerance. No more appeasement. If Prevent is to mean anything, we need no more invitations to hate preacher Raed Salah, to speak in Parliament. No more “indefinite leave to remain” for Mohammed Sawalha, who the BBC say is currently in London, fundraising for Hamas, although I understand that he has denied this. To those who oppose zero tolerance, I say two things: First, we cannot stop burglary, but we still chase thieves. Crime is crime. We must not appease it. Second, symbols are important. If we are determined, extremists will get the message. For example, it is incredible that Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority are now cracking down on Hizb ut-Tahrir (according to their own website) but we still allow it to flourish here in the UK. 

by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

Party Conference: My Campaign for Cheaper Petrol

Today, Conservative Home is giving out 5,000 copies of a free newspaper, at Conservative Party Conference. The newspaper includes an article about our FairFuelUK campaign and our fight for cheaper petrol prices.

You can see the article above, or in the full newspaper HERE.

by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

The Freedom Zone: Why we need Cheaper Petrol

Today at the Freedom Zone, I said we urgently need lower fuel taxes, alongside Martin Vickers MP, Mark Wallace, Simon Richards, and Peter Carroll from the FairFuelUK campaign.

For many months now, I have campaigned for cheaper petrol, with the All-Party Group for Fair Fuel. This is because rip-off petrol prices are the number one issue in Harlow, my home-town.

We have started an e-petition, which has received over 100,000 signatures. It is the third most popular e-petition, and will help us to force an MP's debate in Parliament on the issue.

Now I accept that George Osborne has taken some action. He scrapped Labour’s “fuel tax escalator”, delayed some “inflationary” tax increases, and cut fuel duty by 1p. But we urgently need to do more. We need NO NEW FUEL TAXES IN THIS PARLIAMENT.

It is worth looking at the arguments in detail. Ultimately, I am campaigning for cheaper petrol, because...

- Fuel is already a huge burden. According to figures released by the Royal Automobile Club, the average motorist in my constituency of Harlow is getting fleeced for £1,700 a year just to fill up the family car. This is one tenth of the average local salary. The Government defines “fuel poverty” as spending a tenth of your income just heating your home, but what about spending a tenth of your income just driving to work? Earlier this month, ex-Tesco boss, Sir Terry Leahy, blamed the catastrophic slump in retail sales on the cost of fuel. He told The Sun: 'I don't think people fully appreciated what an oil shock we've had. Filling up the family car has gone up 70% in two years, causing what was a steady recovery to go sideways'.

- High petrol prices are causing unemployment. Businesses are under immense pressure, especially the road freight industry. Unemployment has stayed at around 2.5 million since the election, with petrol prices hitting 150 pence in some places, and there is increasing evidence that these are linked. In 2006, for example, when petrol was just 95p per litre, experts at the London School of Economics, and University College London, published a major piece of research showing that unemployed workers who could not afford to drive or commute to jobs “stayed unemployed for longer”. Since then fuel prices have surged by 40%, despite the recession and many workers suffering from redundancy or wage-freezes. The insolvency firm SFP have said that three quarters of transport business failures in the past year have been caused by excessive fuel prices, compared with Europe.

- UK Haulage firms are being taxed out of existence. Facing higher taxes than in countries such as Ireland, UK Haulage firms are being driven out of business. The Government has taken some action, as foreign lorry drivers are to be charged up to £9 a day to use our roads. But still, foreign drivers – who number one in eight of all those on the roads – have a huge advantage over British drivers as they pay no road tax or other charges.

- The wholesale oil markets are not competitive enough. As the Sunday Times reported a few weeks ago, the cost of oil has fallen by 18% in the past four months, but UK petrol prices have risen by nearly 2% over the same period. Data over the past 4 years, from the AA, shows exactly the same pattern. Cheaper oil is not being passed on to motorists, or businesses, and someone somewhere is making a lot of money out of that. The problem is not forecourts or supermarket retailers, which are very competitive: the problem is the wholesale market, which is dominated by just a few major firms. The lack of competition is similar to the beer market, where pubs are tied by strict contracts to the big brewers.

- Remember the Laffer Curve. Petrol is now so astronomically expensive, that it is now COSTING the Government money. This is because fewer people can afford to drive, leading to lower tax revenues. As I have raised in Parliament, figures from the AA show that the Treasury received £637 million less in revenue from petrol taxes than in the equivalent quarter three years ago. If this is true, it is disastrous. We urgently need a Laffer curve study of petrol taxes, by the Office of Budget Responsibility, or the Treasury, to see whether high taxes are actually making the deficit worse.

- The release of “strategic oil stocks” has helped investment banks, not motorists. This summer, Western countries staged the first release of 60 million barrels of "strategic oil stocks”. This was supposed to cut petrol prices for struggling motorists. But according to the US Department of Energy, much of the subsidised oil was actually diverted away from consumers, and hoarded instead by major American banks. The US Government has confirmed, for example, that JPMorgan bought over 150 million dollars-worth of the oil stocks, and instead of selling these on to motorists, they appear to have hoarded the oil on offshore tankers, waiting for prices to rise. As Bloomberg reported in 2008, they routinely do the same thing with heating oil. There is nothing wrong with trading. But if oil is subsidised by the taxpayer, is should go towards helping struggling motorists, not towards bank profits.

- Cutting fuel duty now must be a priority for the Chancellor, over and above the clamour to cut taxes for millionaires. Rip-off petrol prices are now so high they are a poverty trap, keeping people on benefits, as job-seekers can’t afford to travel, and businesses are struggling to stay afloat.
- Environmentalism has become a luxury for the rich. To those 'do-gooders' who say we shouldn't be using cars, I say: Get In The Real World. In Harlow, the question is not whether can you afford to have a car - but whether can you afford not to.

- Expensive energy costs are THE NUMBER ONE CONCERN for voters. As Conservative Home has repeatedly said, electricity, gas, and petrol prices now outstrip all other issues in terms of public concern. Polling by Populus shows that two thirds of voters are “very concerned”, and a staggering nine out of ten voters are “concerned” overall. The Labour Party are waking up to the political realities of this, hence Ed Miliband is calling for reform of energy firms.

That is why my e-petition calls on the Government to:

1) Scrap the planned 4p fuel duty increases, which are scheduled for January and August 2012.
2) Create a price stabilisation mechanism that smooths out fluctuations in the pump price.
3) Pressure big oil companies to pass on cheaper oil to motorists.
4) Set up a Commission to look at market competitiveness, and radical ways of cutting fuel taxes in the longer term - especially around this issue of the Laffer Curve, and whether high taxes are actually costing us money.
by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

Opening the Freedom Zone: Social Media and the Riots

This morning, I opened the official fringe of Conservative Party conference: The Freedom Zone, hosted by the excellent Freedom Association.

On a panel with Mark Wallace, Sam Bowman, and Christian May, I spoke about the importance of a free social media - however bad the riots this summer may have been.

However bad the riots were, I am deeply uneasy about the Police restricting Blackberry messenger and other social media.

In August, the Government hinted that they would “look to ban people from major social networks” if they were suspected of inciting violence online. They were under immense pressure to do this. But it is a slippery slope. In fact, Chinese state media welcomed the news, and agreed that censoring the Internet was a “positive new attitude” that would “help appease quarrels between East and West”. Interestingly, Mubarak’s last tactic in the Arab Spring was to shut down the Egyptian Internet; the Syrian Government is currently doing the same, as it tries to choke off any news that is hostile to Bashar al-Assad; and Robert Mugabe is trying to ban Blackberries from Zimbabwe.

Fundamentally, I believe in a free Social Media, because...
- Social media is a measure of our freedom. Just as The Economist uses the price of a MacDonald Big Mac to measure a country's prosperity, so too, the level of a country's democracy could be determined by the level of its Blackberry usage. During the Arab Spring, one of the first actions by Middle Eastern autocracies was to ban Blackberries, because the regimes could not access user's details such as messaging and other data.

- We can be tough on crime, without being totalitarian. Now before I go on, I just want to say that I am no namby pamby on recent events.  I favour the toughest measures possible (whether it be plastic bullets, water cannon or whatever) and the harshest punishments possible, in order to ensure that we never see a repeat of the riots. But, I feel deeply uneasy about 'the Government' or 'the authorities' regulating, restricting - in effect  controlling - the use of social media or the use of Blackberries - both on grounds of political precedent and on practicality.

- We should be worried about the ratchet effect. Let's look at political precedent first: the problem with every curtailment of liberty - however noble the intention - it always has a ratchet effect.  Once you start restricting the Internet in this way, it becomes so much easier to restrict it for other reasons.  We may have a benign government now, but a future government might seek to use these powers to restrict social media on simple grounds of legitimate criticism.  You might think that such a course of action is far-fetched - and you may be right - but the problem is that any curtailment opens the door to further infringement.  As the saying goes, liberty is hard won but easily lost.

- Banning social media just wouldn’t work. Second, let's look at practicality.   How on earth do you ban the use of Blackberries et al in this way?  Can you really curtail specific people from using Blackberry Messenger (BBM), given that they will just obtain another Blackberry with a different identity, or use other mobile networks, or other Internet services? True, you can block off mobile phone signals in a particular area, but that hits not only the innocent, but also can be dangerous for those caught up in riots trying to contact the emergency services.

- Banning social media is censorship, by another name. Is the state really going to expand its power to such a degree to monitor every Facebook account, or force Research In Motion (the maker of Blackberries) to hand over trillions of gigabytes of data)?  It is just not feasible. Bad people will always take advantage of technology for evil purposes. Ban BBM and they will soon find another method to try and destroy our society.  Technology - especially mobile technology - is Hydra's head writ large.  We have to face the fact that it is pretty difficult to contain:  instead let us do all we can to make sure that more people are using it as a for good rather than a force for bad.

- Social media isn’t the root cause of the riots. Blaming social media for the riots is a bit like banning beer, because some people get drunk in Town Centres on a Saturday night. Another example is the Molotov Cocktail principle. We don’t want Molotov Cocktails, but does that mean we should ban glass bottles? It would be much better to deal with the root causes of the riots, and prevent these individuals from abusing social media in the first place.

- The UK needs social media: to boost our democracy, and our economy. It was a big loss last week, when Twitter announced that it would establish an international headquarters: not in London, but in Dublin. We need to prove that Britain wants to be a hub for social media, with competitive tax rates, and to prove that the Government can see social media as a force for good. Let's remind ourselves of the good that social media and mobile phones can bring in terms of empowerment, communication and the portabilty of the Internet.

- Social media was used by our Emergency Services and communities, to organise the clean-up. This was one of the main points made in evidence heard by the Home Affairs Select Committee, after the riots – particularly that Blackberry has revolutionised email across the world - to make it accessible without the need for any computer, and affordable for the many. Why not strengthen our democracy, by encouraging mobile communication rather than stifling it?  It is a challenge, yes, but one well worth taking.

by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

Weekly newsletter - October 1, 2011

During the Commons break I have been out and about volunteering around the community.

It has been a great opportunity for me to meet local people who are doing so much sterling work to benefit others in their local area.

You will see from my media releases that I am supporting Colin Riches, a local man, who is campaigning for changes to family law. I would encourage as many people as possible to sign his e-petition.

In the Community
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 –I joined Nazeing Cubs Group to work with the cub leaders and take part in the activities that the group undertakes. This included building a bridge across two tables! Great fun!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – I visited Sheering Primary School to do Milk Duty, as part of World School Milk Day, making sure all the children received their daily intake of milk.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – I spent the morning at Harlow College teaching the AS Government and Politics class about how ideology of political parties has changed since the Second World War.

In the afternoon I undertook a shift running reception at the St Clare Hospice Centre greeting visitors and also helping run the shop.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – I spent the morning at Harlow Foodbank working with volunteers to prepare food parcels for people in Harlow.

In the afternoon I joined Harlow Talking Newspaper to help record the latest edition of newspapers and learn the process of how talking newspapers operate.

I had a meeting with NHS West Essex chief executive Shelia Bremner and GP Commissioner for West Essex Dr Rob Gerlis to discuss health facilities for young people at Occasio House and 0845 call charges for doctors surgeries.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – I spent the evening with Harlow Street Pastors, based at St Paul's Church and went out with them as they servied tea and toast until the early hours of the morning.

Robert's latest media releases
Harlow MP Robert Halfon behind new parliamentary 'Apprentice School': The first parliamentary training programme for apprentices - the idea of Harlow MP Robert Halfon - will be launched next month...

Harlow MP Robert Halfon supports father who has launched an e-petition calling for a change to family law: A Roydon father has received the backing of Harlow MP Robert Halfon in his battle to get changes made to family law so that parents have equal rights and responsibilities for their children...

Harlow MP Robert Halfon gives his support to local organisations involved with Natwest CommunityForce project: ElevenHarlow-based organisations are in the running to receive support through this year’s Natwest CommunityForce project...

Robert's latest media coverage            
ROUNDABOUT HARLOW WEBSITE - Harlow MP Robert Halfon addresses youth unemployment and campaigns to boost the number of apprentices: Since being elected in May 2010, Harlow MP Robert Halfon has been a champion of apprentices...

HARLOW STAR WEBSITE - New shop opens to meet growing demand for recycled goods: An environmental charity has opened a third shop in Harlow to cope with high demands for their recycled goods…

HARLOW STAR WEBSITE - Black History Month event to celebrate cultural diversity in Harlow: A celebration of Harlow’s cultural diversity will take centre stage in the town’s revamped Market Square on Saturday (October 1)...

HARLOW STAR WEBSITE - Plans for Harlow waste transfer plant pushed through by Essex County Council: Furious residents and business owners have spoken of their disbelief after controversial plans for a new waste transfer site in Harlow were approved by Essex County Council...

HARLOW STAR WEBSITE - Harlow MP backs resident's rail safety campaign: A deaf woman whose beloved pet dog was killed by a train has called on Network Rail to erect new safety fencing along a "dangerous" stretch of track running through Harlow Town Park...

Reaching the magic number

by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

The petition which I lodged calling for cuts in fuel duty has reached the 100,000 signature count required to trigger a full MPs debate on the issue.

It crossed the 100,000 signature point at 7.45pm on Friday 30th September 2011.

Robert pictured when he took part in the fuel protest with the FairFuel UK campaign

I have championed this in the House of Commons and am delighted that it has only taken since the end of July to reach 100,000 signatures.

This shows the strength of feeling there is for this issue. Cutting fuel duty now must be a priority for the Chancellor, over and above the clamour to cut taxes for millionaires.

Rip-off petrol and diesel prices are now so high they are a poverty trap, keeping people on benefits as job-seekers can’t afford to travel. Many businesses are struggling to stay afloat.

And to those do-gooders who say we shouldn't be using cars, I say ‘get in the real world’. In Harlow, the question is not whether can you afford to have a car - but whether can you afford not to.

In the debate, I will be arguing for an immediate cut in Fuel Duty and I will be pressing four additional key points:

1 - Whilst acknowledging the welcome 1p cut in Fuel Duty in the last Budget, we will be urging the Government to scrap the two inflationary Fuel Duty rises planned for next year.

2 - Demanding that the Government put more pressure on the oil companies to lower prices at the pump given the fall in International oil prices.

3 - Urging the Government to set up a Royal Commission to look at long-term prices of petrol which have currently become unsustainable.

4 - Examining how the Government release Oil Stocks from the strategic reserves, as there is evidence that the banks brought up supplies, and then stored them at sea, in order to keep oil prices high.