Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Labour MP, Tom Blenkinsop, used a House of Commons debate on Tuesday (10th January 2012) to speak out against possible government plans to try and break up central national pay bargaining for public sector workers.

Tom said “For some time now the government have been looking at trying to ‘regionalise’ public sector pay. This is nothing more or less than an attempt to start a drive to push for worse wages and conditions in areas like Teesside.

It would be an expensive and bureaucratic nightmare. Imagine every secondary or primary school in England and Wales suddenly becoming a separate bargaining unit! All this would do is to take the head teacher and governors away from teaching and management, and force them to become pay bargainers.

It would also reinforce and entrench the existing regional divide. How would lower pay in – say – the North East or on Teesside boost the local economy? All it would do would be to reduce local purchasing power and by that reduce employment in the private retail, service and manufacturing sector.

In the debate I also highlighted the fact that many public service workers work across boundaries. The most visible example of that in recent months was the deployment of officers from the Cleveland Police to London and other cities as back up in the recent riots there. Can you imagine the views of bobbies if they were expected to undertake such dangerous and hazardous work on lower wages than their fellow bobbies next to them?

The Coalition dreams of regionalisation of public sector pay are, in fact a nightmare. I and my fellow Labour MP’s will back all public service workers in standing up against these crazy proposals.”

Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop, today (11th January 2012) said a new Government plan to ‘raid’ local council workers pension funds to underwrite expensive infrastructure projects would mean low paid workers and council pensioners on Teesside paying to widen the North-South divide.

Tom said “Press reports today reveal that Chancellor George Osborne has targeted town hall pension schemes to underwrite big construction schemes which the government does not want to pay for itself.

This means that low paid council workers on Teesside and former council workers who are now pensioners would be forced to see their pension pots paying for schemes which will almost all be in the booming South East.

This was demonstrated only the other week when the new national infrastructure was unveiled. All the big road and rail schemes were in London or the South. In the North East we did not even get the crumbs off the table.

To force local council workers and pensioners to underwrite these schemes from their pension pot will mean that local people will be paying to widen the already cavernous social divide that exists in this country, and thereby eroding the finance base of the councils that employ them and who they pay council tax to.

It is clear that unlike – say – asking the council pension fund to consider investing in local high-tech start up firms, Osborne’s scheme will do nothing whatsoever for the local economy. It is like asking Turkeys not only to vote for Christmas, but pay for it as well.”

Tom Blenkinsop, Labour MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, is urging the Government to reduce the rate of Value Added Tax on e-books, such as those one would download onto a Kindle or iPad.

Currently, customers have to pay VAT at 20% for e-books, whilst the same book–but printed on paper–would attract no VAT.

Tom said: “This is no longer a niche issue. Hundreds of my constituents will use e-books, whilst many more will be receiving devices like Amazon Kindles as Christmas presents. Charging VAT at 20% often makes an e-book as expensive as a paper one for the consumer, which is absurd when there is a much lower cost involved in publishing and distributing an e-book.

This is an anomaly in our country’s tax system, but one that will cost British consumers millions of pounds a year. I am urging the Government to fix this.

Through a Parliamentary questionary, I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, why VAT on e-books is not 0%. In response, a junior Tory Minister told me that the British Government could do nothing, as it was a matter for the EU.

This answer, however, does not add up: France and Luxembourg are currently in the process of drastically reducing VAT on e-books, which will attract business into those countries.. I have asked the Government how they can do this, and I will challenge our Government to find a way to do the same. I also intend to raise it with the North East’s Labour Member of European Parliament, Stephen Hughes.

The Government cannot just blame the EU for this inconsistency in taxation policy; they have to take action to fix it.”

Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Labour MP, Tom Blenkinsop, today hit out at what he said ‘was a distinct possibility’ that development land on Teesside might be sold off and the funds passed to boost housing or jobs growth in the wealthy south.

Tom was speaking after receiving a letter from Government Business Minister, Mark Prisk MP, and in which Mr Prisk outlined the policies the government would be putting in place to sell off land in the former ownership of Regional Development Agencies (RDA’s).

Tom said “the former RDA for the North East, ONE ne, had acquired large tracts of land in and around Durham Tees Valley Airport and around Middlehaven, Middlesbrough in order to facilitate business growth at and around the airport and on Middlehaven. The letter from Mr Prisk said explicitly that whilst the new Local Economic Partnerships (LEP’s) would be allowed to carry on these developments if they had the capacity to do so, they would not be allowed to acquire the receipts from the sale of these land holdings, cash which would instead, go straight back to the Business Ministry in London for re-use nationally”

“This raises the spectre that cash made out of selling land on Teesside would not come back to Teesside, but instead be used for other government programmes elsewhere, and possibly being used to facilitate new private housing or commercial development in London and the South East, areas already wealthy, and which could be made even more wealthier at Teesside’s expense. This, if it were to happen, would be criminal, and I demand that Mr Prisk rethinks this policy as a matter of extreme urgency.”