Dear fellow Londoner,
Now that the summer ‘recess’ is nearly over, we wanted to give you a sneak preview of how we will be challenging Sadiq Khan over the following week.
Motions
On Thursday, the London Assembly will meet for a ‘Plenary’, which gives assembly members the chance to put forward motions. These motions can draw attention to issues and call on the Mayor to act, and they are often approached cross-party. Here are some of the motions we will be putting forwards:
1) Winter Fuel Payment
Chancellor Rachel Reeves recently set out plans to remove the Winter Fuel Payment from up to ten million pensioners. We believe that this money (up to £300 per household) goes a long way to helping many older Londoners pay for their heating each winter. We are supporting Age UK’s campaign to fully reinstate the payment.
We note that last year, Sadiq Khan said an increase of 5% in the Energy Price Cap was “unacceptable”. However, under Labour, the Energy Price Cap will rise by 10% in one month’s time – and Sadiq Khan has not said anything about this, nor has he said anything about the choice to remove the Winter Fuel Allowance from millions of pensioners.
2) Green Belt
Alessandro Georgiou AM recently asked Sadiq Khan about protecting the Green Belt, and Sadiq Khan told us that he would not support weaking protections for Green Belt land. However, we are concerned about the Government’s proposed new ‘grey belt’ designation, which could incentivise landowners to purposefully make their green belt land derelict, in order to qualify for grey belt status and obtain permission for building.
3) Police Failings
You may recall from our newsletter two weeks ago that the Met Police has been found to be failing in seven out of eight graded areas, including “investigating crime” and “preventing crime”, which are arguably the two main goals of any police service. Our motion calls on the Mayor to set out in detail how he intends to improve the Met’s performance in response to this assessment and restore Londoner’s confidence in their police service.
4) Night Medics
We will also be seconding a motion put forward by another Group which talks about the success of the Hackney Night Medics programme, where two paramedics patrol and respond to incidents that occur at night-time. These medics have so far responded to 700 call-outs, and have reduced the need for police and ambulance services. The motion calls on the Mayor to ask his officers to see what can be learned from the scheme, and whether it can be used elsewhere.
Meetings
In addition to the above, our Assembly Members will be taking part in a number of committee meetings, looking at issues such as…
· How we can improve accessibility of public transport (including, for example, for disabled people or those living in Outer London who are underserved);
· How government bodies are protecting themselves from cyber-attacks and data-breaches;
· London’s nightlife and what we can do to stop its decline.
As you can see, we have a busy week planned! If there is anything we can help you with, please feel free to contact us – our details can be found HERE.