3 May
The campaign has now been going for much longer than some
of us originally thought would be necessary. This is mainly because the
Government's Comprehensive Spending Review for the next three years appears to
have been put on the back burner until Tony Blair's replacement is in
office.
The campaign has attracted a lot of attention and support in
Parliament. The Early Day Motions attracted over 200 signatures from MPs of all
parties. There have been three Adjournment Debates and a number of
Parliamentary Questions inspired by our campaign, all of which are linked to
from our In Parliament page. The Liberal
Democrats formally supported our campaign by a resolution at their Spring
Conference.
Support for our campaign from groups other than waterways
groups is growing, if not as quickly as we would like.
Our paper petition gained some 38,000 signatures, and is
likely to presented as soon as the new Prime Minister is in office. Our
electronic one got 7205 signatures. The Prime Minister's Office has now replied
to the latter, and this reply can be read
here.
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee set
up an enquiry into British Waterways looking and funding and other issues. This
has now nearly finished taking evidence. The uncorrected transcripts of the
oral evidence are linked to from our In Parliament page. Some of the more optimistic
among us detect signs in the evidence from the Waterways Minister, Barry
Gardiner MP, that he may be paving the way for the Government to change its
position.
The public part of our campaign continues, now using as its
vehicle the large number of waterways events due to take place over the Summer.
Supporters who are involved in running such events are invites to contact
us.
There is still a need to write to MPs, and our
advice for those planning such letters has
been up-dated in the light of developments.
28 December
DEFRA have now announced its
funding plans for its dependent bodies for 2007/8.
As far as concerns BW these perpetuate the level of funding after the cuts in
the current year, which is in breach of the Waterways Minister's repeated
statement that the cuts were for a single year only. This inconsistency has
been challenged in an excellent IWA Press Release. For the EA the signs are much
harder to read, as only their overall cut has been announced, and it is for
them to decide what part of this should be passed on to their (fairly small)
waterways section. Of course, it's highly likely that DEFRA has very little
room for manoeuvre without an increase in funding from the Treasury.
One might guess that Barry Gardiner, the Waterways
Minister, is less than fully committed to the cause of proper funding from the
waterways, as witness his ducking-out of several opportunities to join in the
debate. He may also be far too junior to carry much clout in his discussions
with his boss, David Milliband. One might further guess that the reason the
Treasury hasn't come up with any help is that (as was revealed by the official
who represented DEFRA at the BW AGM) Milliband hasn't actually asked the
Chancellor for any. And why might he not have done so? Perhaps he's trying to
curry favour and look after his possible promotion in the Cabinet reshuffle
that will follow a change of Prime Minister.
So we now need to shift much more of our campaign efforts
to aim at Gordon Brown.
18 December
We had our meeting on Sunday. After reviewing what we
did in November, we felt fairly pleased by the publicity we had achieved. Then
we turned our attention to Phase 2 and, particularly, Phase 3 of the
campaign.
For Phase 2 we still need more boats for the Jan 16
protest cruise past Parliament. See
here for details.
We agreed to change the date for the Phase 3 weekend
to 3 & 4 March, with the petition delivery a few days later, in order to be
able to collect signatures at the Boat & Caravan Show at the NEC in
Birmingham. We felt unanimously that for Phase 3 we need to aim for much more
explicit participation by non-boating waterway users and local communities. A
number of ideas were put forward and we agreed not to adopt a common formula
for all events, but go encourage a diversity of approaches to suit local
circumstances. Some of the events will be at the same locations as some of the
November ones, others at different places. We're keen to recruit more local
organisers so that we can have even more events in Phase 3 than we did in Phase
1.
15 December
Our protest weekend on November 25/26 is now behind
us. We had a total of 26 events, big and small, and achieved a lot of media
coverage, mainly local. Reports on the events can be seen
here. We also collected a huge number of
petition signatures. That was just phase 1.
Plans for phase 2, our protest cruise past Parliament
on 16 January, are now firm, (details here) and we hope
that will achieve more national coverage.
Phase 3 is for another nation-wide protest weekend,
originally planned for late February but now possibly to be re-scheduled for
early March. The SOW steering group is meeting in a couple of days with (as
many as can come of) the people who organised the events of phase 1. This
meeting is to evaluate phase 1 and to forward the planning for phase 3. I hope
we'll have some announcements for you arising from this meeting. There is a
growing consensus among the group that we need a different style of for that
phase, with much more emphasis on non-boating users and local communities
(although we'll still want plenty of boats involved - that's what the press
photographers like).
Our electronic petition to 10 Downing Street is collecting
signatures rapidly. At its present rate of progress it's likely to reach 3,500
by the end of today.
There are already encouraging signs that our campaign is
having an effect. A third round of cuts threatened by DEFRA for this autumn
was called off.
The Parliamentary end of the campaign is getting very
lively.
- Three new Early Day Motions were tabled as soon as the
new session of Parliament began, and have since been joined by others. The lead
one, EDM 90, is now
nearing 200 signatures. Considering that Ministers, their junior aides, their
opposition opposite number and Whips are not allowed by parliamentary protocol
to sign, that's an impressive proportion of those eligible to sign.
- Sir Peter Soulsby's adjournment debate was re-scheduled
for early December and was well worth listening to, with a large number of
contributions including some outstandingly good ones. In his reply to the
debate, Ben Bradshaw (a minister at DEFRA standing-in for the Waterways
Minister Barry Gardiner) said that BW is now in dialogue about its future
funding not only with DEFRA but now also with the Cabinet Office. I take this
to mean that our efforts have lifted the discussion to a higher level. The
Hansard report of the debate is here.
- And most recently we learn that the relevant Select
Committee of the Commons is to hold an enquiry into the work of BW and has
invited submissions. Details here. This means not only that we can put our
point of view, but also that BW will be under a legal duty to answer questions
truthfully without having to be careful of the interests of their paymasters at
DEFRA.
KEEP UP THE MOMENTUM!
8 November 2006
The campaign has built up good momentum. As I write
this, we have at least 21 events planned up and down the country (plus one in
Australia!) for our first campaign weekend, in just over a fortnight's time.
Some of these are run by boat clubs and branches of national organisations.
Others are run by small groups of individuals (in one case, a single chap).
Already the campaign's voice has been heard in Parliament
(see here), although progress on this front has
been interrupted by the end of the Parliamentary year, when some things come to
an end and have to be re-started after the Queen's Speech on November
15th. One of the three Early Day Motions that were tabled (these are
a way of showing back-bench opinion) gathered 163 signatures - a very
respectable total given that Ministers, Shadow Ministers and their
Parliamentary underlings are barred by convention from signing such
motions.
Inevitably it is boaters who have made the running in the
early stages of the campaign, as we are the people who most easily see
ourselves in the front line of the cuts. But the canoeists and anglers are on
board with us, and I'm finding a lot of support among passers-by on the
towpath. BW estimates that last year there were 300 million visits to their
waterways. This absolutely dwarfs the few thousand boats using them. If our
campaign is to succeed in changing the mood of the Government, we need to
mobilise support from all of these. Let this be one of the themes of our
campaign events.
6 October 2006
The waterways of England and Wales are facing their most
severe crisis for many years, possibly the most severe since the immediate
post-WWII years when many people expected the whole canal system to close down
within a few years. While the present crisis is not as great as the worst fears
of 1946, it is unmistakably severe. The cuts already imposed by DEFRA on the
budgets of the Environment Agency and, more immediately, of British Waterways,
will set back by a huge amount the advances that have been made in the last 60
years. If the projected further cuts in the next few years take place, the
results will be catastrophic.
If all of these cuts go ahead, then the levels of
maintenance needed to keep the canals in the condition we know today (some
would say even in the condition we know them today) will simply not be
affordable, and many canals will regress to the sad state they were in 40 or
more years ago.
Some canals may well close, BW have warned. The ones at
most risk of this are probably among the more recently restored ones whose
restoration in many cases has been (at least in their later stages)
substantially funded by major grant-awarding bodies such as the various Lottery
funds. What a waste of money this will prove if the canals close and revert to
their former dereliction.
Who does this effect? Most obviously the people in the front
line will be the boaters, who will find themselves with worse-maintained
waterways, a reduced cruising range and fewer facilities, for all of which they
will be asked to pay a much-increased licence fee. But they won't be the only
sufferers. Towpath maintenance is likely also to be reduced, to the detriment
of walkers and cyclists. Silted canals will offer less sport for anglers. There
will be an inevitable decline in the tourist revenue earned by the canals, and
many canalside businesses may become uneconomical. This will have a strongly
negative effect on the economics of waterside communities, who will also suffer
a direct loss of the canal as a local amenity. And house-owners and business
who have chosen their present location in part for the pleasant vista of a
waterway will not be very happy if that waterway degenerates to a stinking,
abandoned ditch.
And why is it happening? Because the Department of
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has made an utter hash of an entirely
different part of its responsibilities and incurred a massive fine which we,
the waterways users and lovers are being asked to help pay for. That makes us
very angry,
But a campaign to get the decisions changed is winnable. The
crucial pressure points in the Government's budgetary process fall within the
next few months. These must be our first campaign targets.
If we don't get all we want then, there are two other
important milestones in the future. We are told to expect a change of Labour
leader within the next year. This will result in a change of Ministerial
responsibilities, almost certainly a large one. It is at such times that the
departmental structure of the government machine sometimes changes. It would
probably not take much pressure to make an incoming Prime Minister do away with
a lame-duck department like DEFRA and move its responsibilities elsewhere. And
perhaps the waterways will find themselves with more sympathetic, as well as
more competent, paymasters. And if the fight has to be even more prolonged,
there will be a General Election to follow.
But we must concentrate for now on those early target dates,
and we must work together. Ten national organisations including SOW) have
banded together in this campaign. |
