Cheltenham Liberal Democrats

Health minister Simon Burns has written to Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood confirming for the first time that our local primary care trust, NHS Gloucestershire, is actively exploring the option of an NHS Trust for Gloucestershire's community health services.

NHS Gloucestershire had planned to create Gloucestershire Care Services last October as a non-NHS company but the process was hugely controversial and was eventually stopped in its tracks by a judicial review case. The PCT has to separate out community health services - including community hospitals, health visitors and specialist community nurses - in advance of its own replacement by the new GP-led clinical commissioning group which will take charge of spending the local NHS budget next year.

Monitor, the official regulator of NHS Foundation Trusts, has today warned that waiting times at Cheltenham's A&E have been overshooting national standards for several years and that attempts to improve the situation by Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have not succeeded. Waiting times at Cheltenham are still 'considerably worse' than at Gloucester. Monitor will now step in to closely supervise the implementation of an action plan to improve the service to local people.

Cheltenham-based Commercial Group, renowned for their green credentials, has secured a new opportunity to supply members of the House of Commons. They have set up a new and innovative on line ordering tool for office supplies, in partnership with Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the expenses watchdog that regulates all MPs' business costs and expenses. Until now most MPs sourced their stationery, printer cartridges and other office supplies from various suppliers.

Introduction: context.

1. In 2010 the General Election produced a hung Parliament. The central issue that faced the new Parliament was how to tackle the huge economic crisis inherited from the previous Labour Government - and in particular at what rate public expenditure should be reduced to cut Government borrowing and the huge debt associated with this.
2. On this basis a coalition Government of Liberal Democrats and Conservatives was formed which meant compromising some of the policies of both parties. Regardless of the disagreements that we may have with bits of its programme, it was the right thing to do. If we had not then there would have been paralysis which would have delayed our capacity to address the financial crisis the country faced and this would have lead to more chaos.
3. As a result of the level of national debt, the Liberal Democrat run Council had to make the biggest cuts in expenditure in the Council's 135 year history. It cut almost £2.8m from a net budget of £16.7m - an unprecedented 17% reduction. It had no other choice but to do this.
4. It froze Council Tax, staff wages and politician's allowances, and reduced Cabinet allowances by 5%. It pioneered 'shared' services with other authorities within the region in order to improve Council services and reduce costs, and began the process of examining everything it did with the view of 'commissioning' the best and most cost-effective way of delivering services.
5. It successfully balanced the budget whilst maintaining the majority of services and without closing a major facility - and still maintained key development commitments such as the Museum Extension.
6. It reinforced its reputation for competence and vision in the light of the most difficult circumstances the Council has ever faced and committed itself to delivering better and cheaper services.

Over 20 million working people will be better off next year after Liberal Democrats in the Coalition Government delivered the biggest ever increase in the income tax personal allowance in the Budget.

The massive £3.5bn tax cut for working people delivers:

• The biggest ever single uplift in the tax threshold
• A personal allowance of £9,205 in April 2013
• 21 million working people getting an extra £220 tax cut
• Brings the total tax cut for basic rate tax payers to £550
• Brings the total number of people lifted out of tax to 2 million.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg used his speech to the Party's Spring conference in NewcastleGateshead to call for the forthcoming budget to be a "budget for fairness" and pledged that it would help working familes.

The Deputy Prime Minister pledged that by 2015 Britain would have seen an end to control orders, the first gay marriages and the first elections to the House of Lords.

Fairer taxes, promoting green jobs, protecting your civil liberties - these are just some of the achievements of the Liberal Democrats in government.

We're building a freer, greener and more liberal country - and stopping some of the worst excesses of the Conservatives. Find out more in this infographic.

This week Martin Horwood MP signed a Book of Commitment in the House of Commons, in doing so pledging his commitment to Holocaust Memorial Day and honouring those who died during the Holocaust.

Friday January 27th will mark the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi concentration and extermination camp which is the site of the largest mass murder in history - and in the weeks running up to the day, the Holocaust Educational Trust placed a Book of Commitment in the House of Commons, giving MPs the chance to honour those who were persecuted and killed during their Holocaust and encouraging constituents to actively speak out against prejudice and bigotry today.

CHELTENHAM MP Martin Horwood has today condemned the government's announcement of a badger cull trial. In a statement to the House of Commons, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman stated that there would be two pilot projects for the controlled culling of badgers, as part of a package of measures to combat bovine TB. The locations of the trials are still to be decided. After the trials, it would then be decided by government whether to go ahead with a country-wide cull.