Dear All,
This is the letter I have written to the Editor of the Welwyn Hatfield Times on this issue.
"Sir,
When I launched the campaign to try and protect our Green Belt against Government plans to build 10,000 additional houses in Welwyn Hatfield by 2021, I did so on a cross-Party basis.
Your newspaper has enthusiastically backed the No Way To 10k campaign, along with Welwyn Hatfield Council, the LibDems, the Green Party, the Conservative Party, most residents' associations and many community groups.
It therefore seemed only natural to write to the local Labour Party to ask them to back this community-based campaign too. I'm delighted to report that some of their public spirited councillors including Cllr Chris Cory (of Peartree Ward) were quick to back the No Way To 10k campaign. Others, however, were not quite so generous in their support for one of our community's greatest current challenges.
In particular I was hugely saddened to learn that rather than writing back to me to support our community-based campaign, Labour's Councillor Maureen Cook instead wrote to Parliamentary authorities complaining that the areas MP had written to her in the first place. And the substance of her complaint? That whilst writing to build a cross-community, cross-party campaign to save our Green Belt, I used £3.30 worth of stamps from my postal budget, rather than from my Incidental Expenditure Provision!
As the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir Philip Mawer, put it in his letter back to Cllr Cook, "...it seems to both the Assistant Serjeant and me that Mr Shapps's letter (to you) concerns a matter in which it is perfectly proper for Mr Shapps to involve himself as the Constituency Member (of Parliament). Moreover, it seems clear that, although the local campaign he is mounting involves criticism of Government policy, he is seeking to pursue it in a cross-party fashion."
My I use this opportunity to thank the councillors and many hundreds of residents from across the constituency who have taken the time to sign the
http://www.NoWayTo10k.com petition so far. We all accept that building new homes is a necessity and Welwyn Hatfield has already readily agreed to build 5,800 of the 10,000 houses. What we don't want to see is our entire Green Belt used up and another town, roughly the size of Hatfield, built alongside.
The community rightly expects its politicians to take the lead and join together when a common threat of this magnitude is upon us. Indeed, the same should apply to the stealth-like cuts and closures we're experiencing at our beloved QEII Hospital -- without any realistic prospect of a new super-Hospital ever being opening in Hatfield.
For my part I can only apologise for having hoped that on this one occasion the local Labour leadership would stand up for the community before worrying about petty politics. We'll have to leave it to the electorate to deliver its own verdict on their behaviour next May, but in the meantime let's get on with fighting for what really matters to this community.
Yours sincerely,
Grant Shapps MP"
All the best
Grant Shapps MP
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Topic: nowayto10K (Information thread (Non Discussion group)) (Read 11050 times)