Justine Greening MP Writes To Residents
Her Westminster and local role, including Brexit, Heathrow expansion and more
Planting a tree with the Putney Society at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability
Dear Resident,
The year has got off to a very busy start both locally and in Parliament. We finally had the so-called "Meaningful Vote" on the Prime Minister's Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration, and then additional votes since - there's a Brexit update below.
In the meantime, I'm working hard on the rest of our local issues. I've organised a Heathrow aircraft noise public meeting on 20 February at 7pm at the Community Church in Werter Road in order to run through the consultations that are underway and how they affect our community. We're also hopefully making real progress with our community plans for Roehampton Playing Fields which there's more detail about below.
I've also met with Ministers about how we can now unlock funding for improvements for Putney High Street via the Future High Streets Fund and been continuing my work on my Creditworthiness Assessment Bill. Finally, with Higher Education finance reform on the Government's agenda, I've been pressing Ministers to make sure that proposals are sensible - see my updates below.
As always, I'm out and about in the constituency, so do get in touch if you ever have any concerns or want to get involved in a local campaign or project going on.
Working in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields
In January, I had a busy month getting out and about, and working on the local and national issues raised with me by residents. I:
• Wrote over 1500 letters or emails to constituents about their concerns.
• Had nearly 90 meetings in my role as MP.
• Attended the Heathrow Consultation event in Roehampton to reiterate our community's concerns about extra flights and noise.
• Met with AFC Wimbledon to get an update on the new stadium and how they'd like to work with community groups across our area.
• Chaired the latest Roehampton Playing Fields Community Trust meeting which is developing our local community proposal for the Roehampton playing fields.
• Met with the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability to discuss their plans for the future and how they can offer the best possible care for patients and planted a tree with the Putney Society.
• Held a resident's coffee morning in West Hill to discuss local concerns and national issues with residents.
• Chaired a meeting with local residents who are interested in getting a group together to take care of the environment in and around King George's Park and promote the usage of it by our local community.
• Joined the Putney Society for lunch to celebrate the New Year.
Working in Westminster
As your local Member of Parliament, this month in Westminster I have:
• Spoke in debates and asked Parliamentary questions on:
• NHS Long Term Plan
• Heathrow Flight Paths and drones risk
• The European Union Withdrawal Act
• Leaving the EU
• EU Free Trade Agreements
• HMI Prison and Probation Report
• ME Treatment
• You can see all my contributions here.
• Met with the Home Secretary to raise our local concerns about the Immigration Bill and police funding.
• Met with the National Union of Students and Universities UK to discuss my proposals for Higher Education finance which you can see here and would see the current system with student fees and debt scrapped and instead a system based around a graduate contribution system and a Higher Education Fund. It's similar to what we do for the NHS and National Insurance, but just whereas we all pay for the NHS because we all use it, only graduates would pay into the Higher Education Fund and my proposal would mean the graduates that financially did the best out of having a degree would contribute the most.
• Attended the Women2Win Networking Reception which aims to encourage more women to get involved in politics.
• Hosted a roundtable with Lord Bird and various stakeholders involved in the issue of affordable credit about our Creditworthiness Assessment Bill, which means rental information can be taken into account to help renters get a stronger credit score and access to more affordable credit.
• Met with Jake Berry, the Minister responsible for high streets, to discuss the Future High Streets fund and find out how we can apply for available funding to help improve Putney High Street. For more details read the story below.
• Met with Foxtons, Mazars, HML, Young Enterprise and Mayer Brown about the Social Mobility Pledge. We've had several great sign ups already this year with Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, and Wessex Water. In just 10 months since I launched it, the Social Mobility Pledge now covers companies employing 1.5 million employees across Britain.
• Celebrated the launch of the Association of Colleges blueprint for technical skills and lifelong learning.
• Met Chris Skidmore, the Minister for Universities, on higher education reform and met with Universities UK and the University of Cambridge to get feedback on my idea of a reform to Higher Education funding in advance of the Augur Review being published.
• Attended the Great British Spring Clean event in Parliament to discuss what we can do to keep our communities clean. Stay tuned for information about my riverside clean after the Boat Race
• Spoke to founders at the Trevor Project about their plans to work with UK organisations providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention to young LGBTQ+ people.
• Met with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to discuss how we can work together on getting even more progress on the Social Mobility Pledge.
• Spoke to civil servants at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about the work they are doing on social mobility, widening the diversity of people coming into the FCO, and the importance of leveling the playing field by providing opportunities for young people from all backgrounds.
Future High Streets Fund
This month I met with Jake Berry MP (above), the Minister for Local Growth, to discuss Putney High Street and how we will be able to access funding for improvements from the Future High Streets Fund proposed in the Chancellor's Budget.
The Minister has confirmed that local authorities, such as Wandsworth Borough Council, will be able to bid for funding in order to deliver on proposals. This is great news and I've written to the Leader of the Council, Ravi Govindia, to encourage him to put forth a bid for Putney High Street which will see us improve transport connectivity and increase pedestrianisation to hopefully improve the local shopping experience on the High Street for residents.
Roehampton Playing Fields
For the past year I've chaired the Roehampton Playing Fields Community Trust meetings. This is a group of local residents who have come together to form the Trust and develop plans for how the Roehampton playing fields could be better run with involvement from our local community.
There's been some great work from the Trust to bring in all sorts of local groups and residents that are keen to see how they can get more involved with using the playing fields. Dover House Lions is a fantastic local children's football club that's been at the centre of the work and alongside that is the involvement of a local cricket club, local schools, youth charity Regenerate, our local NHS from Queen Mary's Hospital and a range of other groups. The Trust has now got some well developed plans about how we can really take care of the playing fields, and help them be a really well used and well loved amenity by everyone locally. It's been crucial to have our West Putney councillors involved and helping out too, including Councillor Steffi Sutters. We're now hoping that a council meeting next week will agree to open up a new process for how the playing fields are run and looked after that our Trust can put it's proposal into. There'll be a consultation first, and I'll keep residents updated on that.
Heathrow Consultation and upcoming public meeting: 20 February
7pm, Community Church on Werter Road
I will be holding a public meeting on Wednesday, 20 February at 7pm at the Community Church in Werter Road, Putney.
As many will know, Heathrow has published a consultation on its future operations with proposals for how it will operate three runways at an expanded airport and plans for the design of airspace to accommodate that, but also proposals for how to use its two existing runways in the meantime. There is a postcode checker on feedback@heathrowconsultation.com the consultation website which can show you where the new flightpaths could be and how they'd affect you. The consultation runs until 4 March 2019 and is online at www.heathrowconsultation.com. You can email views to feedback@heathrowconsultation.com.
The consultation asks for views on noise, respite, night flights and where flight paths could be in the future. For the first time the geographical areas known as ‘design envelopes’ are published so residents can see which areas might be affected although Heathrow have caveated them so it is still very unclear where they finally will be but it is highly likely that man more areas will be affected by aircraft noise, as the plan is to have arrivals flight paths now fan out more widely across many parts of London, rather than all flying along the river. Also departures may increasingly now have periods of time when they fly over this part of London. Frankly, there is still insufficient detail on many of their proposals. I am concerned that it is quite possible that areas like West Hill, Roehampton and Southfields could be much more affected by flightpath noise in the future.
Even before the third runway is built, Heathrow is proposing to try to raise the existing 480,000 flights a year cap, so that there could be as many as 25,000 more flights a year – that’s 68 extra every day. This goes over the original cap on air traffic movements set at the time of the Terminal 5 planning inquiry. It means that both that condition and the "no third runway" condition would be utterly disregarded by Heathrow. More flights would just mean more noise for our local area and, in the light of the recent drone incidents at Gatwick and Heathrow, I believe have the issues in relation to public safety have never been more relevant, especially for those of us who live under the flight path. I've pressed the DfT to review the decision to expand Heathrow in light of the recent drone problems, especially given that those responsible were never caught, underlining how hard this issue is to tackle.
You can contribute your views in writing to the Heathrow consultation. You don’t have to answer each consultation question individually – you can just provide general comments and you can also send them to me and I'll make sure they are submitted. I’ll be going through the documents and will contribute my own response but please do copy me in to your own. The consultation runs until 11.55pm on 4 March 2019. You can respond online at www.heathrowconsultation.com, complete a feedback form available at the exhibition events, send an email to feedback@heathrowconsultation.com or post the feedback form or write to FREEPOST LHR AFO CONSULTATION.
AVIATION 2050: THE FUTURE OF UK AVIATION
The Department for Transport has also now published a Green Paper which outlines proposals for a new aviation strategy. It seems back to front to take a decision on capacity location for a third runway before a strategy is agreed. The Green Paper proposes greater capacity, given passenger numbers are predicted to rise by 53% over the next three decades. It seeks to establish a new decision making framework for additional runways across the UK and assumes that a third runway at Heathrow will be built. Any of the suggested approaches could recommend further expansion at Heathrow and, worryingly, it specifically does not rule out a fourth runway. The paper also sets out carbon emission targets, proposals to manage noise impacts to reduce the impact on public health and quality of life and plans for surface access to ensure it is more sustainable. It also looks at airspace modernisation with new types of flight path and includes a Passengers’ Charter.
It is important that we feed our views into this paper which will inform the UK’s strategy on aviation until 2050. Although there are some proposals that could mean improvements in terms of noise and air pollution, it seems likely that an increase in the number of flights would just outweigh them. The DfT will look at our responses with a view to publishing a White Paper in mid-2019.
The closing dates for comments to this DfT consultation is 11:45pm on 11 April 2019. You can respond with your views online at aviationstrategy.campaign.gov.uk or email AviationStrategy@dft.gov.uk or write to Aviation Strategy, Department for Transport, 33 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 4DR.
I hope that’s a helpful update and I’ll continue to keep you informed on what I’m doing on Heathrow. It would be great to see you at the public meeting on 20 February and I can brief residents on more of the details.
An update on Brexit
As you will know, this month in Parliament we voted on the Prime Minister's Withdrawal Agreement from the EU, which the House of Commons overwhelmingly voted against.
I was one of those MPs who voted against the Prime Minister's deal because having carefully read the 585 page Withdrawal Agreement and 26 page Political Declaration, like many others, I had a number of concerns. I believe it ties Britain into complying with rules over which we will have no say. I also had concerns that the deal is not good for the political stability of the UK. It has proposals that mean that Northern Ireland will likely ends up increasingly aligned to the EU rather than the rest of the UK, which will have a corrosive effect on our United Kingdom both in Northern Ireland and in Scotland. I am also very concerned it will also in practice undermine the Good Friday agreement which has brought peace and security for people in our country.
In addition, the so-called Political Agreement that is intended to set out the longer term relationship between the UK and the EU gives no little detail, has no timescales, no guarantees and is not binding on either party. In terms of voting this past week, my votes reflected that many people who've contacted me share the real concerns I have about simply leaving with no deal at all on 29 March and the lack of preparedness for that as things stand, alongside the impact on jobs and investment. There will no doubt be more negotiation and discussion over the coming days and fortnight.
I hope that this update gives you a brief snapshot of some of the things I am working on as our local Member of Parliament. As ever, if you would like to contact me or raise an issue, than please get in touch and I will do the best I can to help. You can email me on justine@justinegreening.co.uk, write to me at 3 Summerstown, SW17 0BQ or call my office on 0208 946 4557. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook to see all my latest updates.
Best wishes,
February 1, 2019