Author Archives: John Leech MP

John Leech MP writes… Remembering the reasons for Leveson

The Manchester Evening News has a regular slot in the paper where they get a number of MPs to write an opinion column on topical issues of their choice. This week just happened to be my turn, so I thought that I would comment on the eagerly awaited Leveson report, due out on Thursday.

For those of you who don’t know, the MEN is owned by Trinity Mirror, and along with other major newspaper groups, are totally opposed to independent regulation of the press. They claim that regulation will be the end of freedom of expression. How ironic then, that the …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , and | 8 Comments

John Leech MP writes… It is not just the Leader’s job to sell the Pupil Premium

The Pupil Premium is one of our biggest achievement in government, and helps the poorest children in our country bridge the gap when it comes to the quality of education they receive. Manchester has had an extra £19 million this year, and the overall spend is some £1.25 billion this year, increasing to £2.5 billion by 2014/15.

The Pupil Premium ticks all the boxes for the Party. It is designed to help the most disadvantaged, it allows schools to spend the extra money flexibly, and it is new money on top of the school budget.

So why are we not shouting about …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 22 Comments

John Leech MP writes: New £1bn nuclear windfall must be taxed

On Monday, MPs will be asked to vote through £1 billion in windfall profits to existing nuclear operators for doing absolutely nothing new. We fought the last general election on the promise of opposing new nuclear power and certainly reject public subsidies for nuclear power.

Whatever your take on nuclear power though, surely it’s unjustifiable and politically untenable to hand out £1 billion to EDF and Centrica directly from consumer purses, when people are already feeling the squeeze.

The windfall will do nothing to ensure new electricity generation, nothing to help us meet our renewable energy targets and nothing to build popular …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 8 Comments



Recent Comments

  • User AvatarPaul Reynolds 25th May - 4:27am
    Drawing conclusions from the melee which includes phone video footage, police and security service statements, and selected witness accounts is probably premature. For example, what...
  • User AvatarPaul Reynolds 25th May - 3:49am
    Policy on this subject matter was passed by Conference about 4 years ago. It was clumsily called 'UK response to Globalisation' or something similar. It...
  • User AvatarAmalric 25th May - 2:19am
    Thank you Geoffrey Payne for your clarification. I agree with you that the 2015 manifesto has to galvanise the membership into action. However I am...
  • User AvatarMatthew Huntbach 25th May - 2:08am
    Richard S Also I have given this example before. Among ethnically Chinese kids living in the UK the pass rate for 5 GCSEs is 78...
  • User AvatarMatthew Huntbach 25th May - 1:59am
    Chris Who knows? I was just pointing out that your previous comment seemed to be concerned with education on another planet (or in another century),...
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