Reporting Back - February 2010
Annette Brook MP, Mid Dorset and North Poole Constituency
I have had an extraordinarily busy time with Parliamentary work in the last few weeks. Last week I spent twelve and half hours in total in a Bill Committee for the latest Government piece of legislation on Children, Schools and Families. The work entails going through the Bill line by line and discussing amendments. My conclusions were that we had some excellent debate on a very poor Bill! I also attended two sessions of my Select Committee. A session will typically last for about 3 hours. We are currently looking at the numbers of young people not in education, employment, or training which is proving to be interesting, depressing and challenging. I spoke at two Conferences during the week and I asked a question in Treasury questions, basically asking for a better deal for our pensioners. In addition I had a number of meetings with various organisations, including dropping in to support the Royal British Legion's campaign "it's time to do your bit".
Many people comment to me that they are surprised that there are so few MPs in the House of Commons at certain times. You can see from the above that sitting in the Chamber is only a small part of an MP’s work. I also have hundreds of E mails coming in every day to which I try to respond very quickly when I am in London.
The issue of MPs expenses has been prominent in the news again. I do not feel that MPs should under any circumstances be above the law and I feel that it is very damaging to our whole parliamentary system that the four parliamentarians who are being prosecuted are trying to claim parliamentary privilege. As I have previously stated I did have to pay some money back as a consequence of the external audit that has very belatedly taken place, I was overpaid by the Fees Office on several items. I should add that this audit did not take underpayments into account.
I chose not to appeal as I just think we have to move on and reform the whole system as quickly, efficiently, and cost effectively as possible.
Locally, there is much concern about a new proposed funding formula for our pre schools. Interestingly my Select Committee looked at the situation across the country and so I am able to bring my knowledge from that experience to what is happening in Poole. I am deeply concerned that such a high proportion of local providers are unhappy with the current proposals, long term sustainability of good quality early years education is extremely important. I am looking at the situation carefully.
The articles of Annette Brooke are archived below:
2011 - January, February, February (updated), April, May, June
2010 - February, July, September, October, November, December
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