Linlithgow and East Falkirk Constituency Labour Party

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Linlithgow and East Falkirk Constituency Labour Party: A.G.M 2011 Member of Parliament’s Report: 2 October 2011

CONSTITUENCY WORK:
First and most importantly I would like to record my Appreciation and Warmest Thanks to Jackie (and her recent temporary substitute Helen) at Grangemouth; to Yvonne at Bathgate; to Harry in the constituency and Bob in Westminster – they are the team that make it all work! Thanks also to CLP Officers, councillors and members for their work.

As in the past, I have held 73 Surgeries in the various communities of West Lothian and East Falkirk on Friday evenings and in my consistency offices on Saturday mornings. With the costs of running 2 offices and the withdrawal of the communications allowance it has not been possible to fund weekly newspaper advertising but posters and office contacts mean surgeries have a steady attendance. To try to increase availability I undertook a programme of 10 mid-week Community Surgeries in September in smaller communities with varying results, but an increase in contacts overall.

Contacts with, attendance at and visits to local Civic and Business organisations take up some of each Friday and Monday, with a bigger concentration through the week during parliamentary recesses. The response to me as Labour MP has remained mainly very supportive, as Shadow Secretary of State Anne McKechin MP found on a recent industrial visit to the constituency.

Media Coverage at a local level is uneven, but this may be because we are generating more stories than the local press can handle, but West Lothian seems to be a particular problem with good stories going unreported. Members can view most of our news stories on my web site at www.mconnartymp.com – click on Recent News and make their own judgement on our local press coverage. See also the Parliamentary Campaigns section.

Local Campaigns such as the successful campaign (with Cllrs. Jim Swann & George Paul) to persuade First Bus to reinstate the X14 Glasgow-Edinburgh bus which ran through our West Lothian villages have been widely applauded, while our opponents inaction has been strongly criticised. Giving support to campaigns by local branches of national campaigns such as Fair Trade, TB. Results, or the specific Bathgate Burn’s statue funding bid – also continuing to publicly support the work of The Vine Trust – opening the new OXFAM shop in Linlithgow or accepting a role as a proposed Trustee for the Newtown Park Development Trust in Bo’ness underline Labour’s local commitment to our communities.

WORK IN THE UK PARLIAMENT:
Since the Conservatives took control of the EU Scrutiny Committee I continue to be the ‘ranking’ Labour Member on the committee, which means I continue to ‘read all the papers’ and try to put forward Labour’s balanced ‘supportive, but not uncritical’ view of the developing EU situation. From the financial crisis facing some Eurozone countries to the role of the EU External Action Service in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the attempt of the EU Commission and Parliament to get (illegally) involved in Common Security and Defence matters are high on the agenda. I try to present the Labour position at European level meetings of Parliamentarians, as a speaker at EU Conferences (Fri 30 Sept 2011) and at COSAC (the Joint EU Committees Meeting in Warsaw 2-4 Oct 2011).

No longer being the Chair of the EU SC has allowed me to give more time to other issues that have interest from local organisations, but also wider implications, such as on the incidence of TB both in its growth in Scotland and also Worldwide, or the incidence of Abdominal Aortic disease. In pursuing these campaigns down to the local level I have been building a useful relationship with our new list MSP Neil Findlay from West Lothian who has been placing related questions in the Scottish Parliament. I expect that the health failures of the SNP Government in Scotland will be more and more apparent and hopefully Neil will be able to make that obvious to the Scottish public.

I continue to hold positions and campaign on behalf of Parliamentary industrial groups such as the Oil and Gas Group (Sec.); Chemical Industries (Vice Chair); Nuclear Energy (Sec.) which impact on local Scottish and UK employment etc. As Chair of the Parliamentary Jazz Group (and Vice Chair of the Performer’s Alliance) I played an active part in a 5 year campaign persuading the EU to extend the payment of copyright royalties to musicians for their recordings to 70 years (from 50) from date of the recording, in August 2011. This will guarantee tens of thousands of session musicians and band players a longer and fairer reward for their work into their old age.

Wider Campaigns and Issues have always been part of my agenda and I hope the constituency will continue to approve of my work in these areas. Human Trafficking, including Exploitation and Sexual Abuse of Children and Domestic Slavery have been a growing problem across Europe and it has been identified as a worldwide, organised criminal activity worth Billions of pounds. Having been appointed as a Labour MP on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) which supports the work of the Court of Human Rights based in Strasbourg I am confronting these issues more and more. The Report of the Children’s Commissioner for Scotland identified 240 children trafficked IN to Scotland over 18 months, and I have recently put down UK Parliamentary Questions on the issue at the request of his office.

The Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking (of which I have been appointed the Labour Vice-chair) takes evidence regularly from trafficked individuals and support groups. We are also involved in building Anti-Human Trafficking Parliamentary Groups in all EU National Parliaments. Scotland, the UK and the EU are the target countries for children and women for exploitation and prostitution and I am helping to build a network to combat the criminals in the source countries and transit countries, while the Tories are mistaken to think we can just create a fortress Britain and stop it at our borders. I was active in Labour’s successful campaign to get the present Government to sign up to both the EU Directive on Human Trafficking and the EU Directive on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of Children. We now need to get them to ratify the Council of Europe Convention. I was appointed in 2011 by the UK Delegation in Strasbourg to be the UK Parliament’s representative on the ‘1 in 5’ campaign Against Exploitation and Sexual Abuse of Children focused across the 49 countries who are members of the Council of Europe.

I also continue to campaign on the treatment of the Palestinian people and have been active in Parliamentary debates on the UN Recognition of the State of Palestine, based on its 1967 boundaries. In February 2011 I revisited the Palestinian refugee camps and wrote part of a pamphlet on the situation there, which I made available to constituency members. I continue to give my active support to the people of Cuba in campaigning for the lifting of the US embargo on full trade and to Free the Miami 5 who have been imprisoned and denied visits by their families against all agreements on Human Rights. I hope the constituency approves of my involvement.

Michael

MICHAEL CONNARTY MP

LABOUR MP FOR LINLITHGOW & EAST FALKIRK

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