Annette Brooke MP &#8211; Public Servant Profle

Annette Brooke MP – Public Servant Profle

admin / December 30th, 2009 / 1 Comment »


Annette Brooke MP	Annette Brooke MP
	Mid Dorset & North Poole
	Liberal Democrats
	(born 7 June 1947) is a British politician. She is the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Mid Dorset and North Poole. She is currently a Liberal Democrat spokeswomen for Children, Schools and Families.

"To be advised"

Name:	Annette Brooke MP
Political Party:	Liberal Democrats
Constituency:	Mid Dorset & North Poole
Address:	14 York Road Broadstone Dorset BH18 8ET United Kingdom - Map
Office Hours:	Office Hours: 9am – 4pm (Monday – Friday). 24 hour Message Service for outside office hours
Phone Number:	+44 (0) 1202 693 555
Fax Number:	+44 (0) 1202 658 420
Email Address:	Click Here to Contact through House Of Commons
Website Address:	www.annettebrooke.org
House of Commons Telephone:	+44 (0) 20 7219 3000 (Ask for the office of Annette Brooke)
House of Commons Address:	Annette Brooke, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA
KwikChex Membership Level:	Public Servant Member
Date Joined KwikChex:
KwikChex Webseal Displayed:	To be advised

Political Career:	* Elected to Poole Borough Council 1986 – 2003: Positions held include * Deputy Leader, Chair of Planning, Chair of Education and Mayor of Poole * Elected as MP for Mid Dorset & North Poole in 2001 * Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Children, Young People and Families 2004 – present * Member of Children, Schools and Families Select Committee * Vice-President of Women Liberal Democrats for 2008 * Member of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) * Chair of All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) for Microfinance and Voice UK * Co-Chair of APPGs for Breast Cancer and Adoption and Fostering * NSPPC Parliamentary Ambassador
Professional Career:	* Lecturer and teacher (Economics and Social Sciences) for over 20 years – Open University and various schools around the Poole area. Most recently Head of Economics – Talbot Heath School * Gave up teaching to concentrate on politics full time in 1993
Personal:	* Married with two adult daughters and a young granddaughter * BSc (Hons): Economics – London School of Economics * Certificate in Education – Hughes Hall, Cambridge University * Personal interests include spending time with my family.

Time Spent in Commons:	I follow a wide variety of issues in the House of Commons, but have concentrated particularly on Child Protection issues. Sitting on the Children, Schools and Families Committee I take an active interest in all legislation going through the House of Commons regarding this issue.
Other Parliamentary Activities:	I was very proud to play a prominent role in securing a medal for those who served in Suez prior to 1956. I am very involved with microfinance and promoting it as a method of effectively helping those in the developing world help themselves. I am the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Microfinance and in 2005 I met Hollywood actress Natalie Portman to discuss the microfinance charity, FINCA International, and their plans to help the world’s poorest people become self-sufficient.
Time Spent in Constituency:	I spend a great deal of time working in Mid Dorset and North Poole and hold regular surgeries where I meet local residents to discuss issues of concern. There is generally a large overlap between my constituency and parliamentary work and I often follow issues up in Parliament that have been brought to my attention by local residents. Examples of this would be my work with the Royal National Institute for the Blind to increase the number of text books and early year books available in Braille and other accessible formats – this issue was raised by a local family with a blind child struggling with this problem. Similarly, I have lobbied the Government for a change in the law to protect Park Home owners from unscrupulous park owners, which originated as a local issue. One of the biggest local issues is the South West Regional Spatial Strategy, which is a Government imposed plan to build houses in the Green Belt around Mid Dorset and North Poole. I have been campaigning against this locally and in Westminster, speaking in four parliamentary debates on the issue, presenting two parliamentary petitions in the House of Commons and sponsoring an Early Day Motion calling for the South West Regional Spatial Strategy to be scrapped.
Official visits / trips:	"To be advised"
Charitable work:	NSPPC Parliamentary Ambassador Patron of Julia’s House Chair of UYDO (a young person’s microfinance organisation)
Other outside interests:	" To be advised"

Afghanistan:	I would like to recognise the enormously impressive work of our Armed Forces in Afghanistan. The last eight years have been incredibly difficult and our troops have faced considerable problems of strategy, equipment and personnel. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I support this tough but necessary mission. We believe that the terrorist training camps in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan pose a direct threat to the security on the streets of Britain. Allowing these camps to continue operating is simply not an option. However, the Liberal Democrats have always been highly critical of the strategy implemented in Afghanistan. Ever since our troops first stepped into Afghanistan, the Government strategy has been over-ambitious in aim and under-resourced in practice. More than that, it has taken the wrong approach since the very beginning. The British Government obediently followed former President Bush’s ‘military-only’ strategy and failed in the ensuing eight years to develop a complementing political strategy that could have delivered an end to the conflict. This failure, coupled with the disastrous decision to invade Iraq in 2003 before Afghanistan was stabilised, has cost many lives. I voted against the war in Iraq, believing that it was an illegal invasion. Money spent on that invasion has diverted resources and our focus away from Afghanistan. We should not have sent a single soldier to Afghanistan until the strategy and equipment that they needed for success was in place. I am pleased that there has recently been a big shift in strategy in Afghanistan but much more remains to be done. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has argued for a political strategy on three levels: a regional peace settlement involving the surrounding nations, including Pakistan, Russia, China and, most problematically, Iran; a national political strategy in Afghanistan to root out government corruption, build good governance and inspire pride and commitment among Afghans toward their government; and local political work to emphasise reconstruction as well as reconciliation with moderates among the Taliban. Until we have made sufficient progress with these political challenges, I believe that our departure would risk destabilisation in the region and leave the country open to become again a haven for Islamist terrorism. Such a scenario may have severe consequences for neighbouring Pakistan – a nuclear power – in addition to fuelling the international drugs trade of Afghan opium. Because of these real possibilities, I believe we cannot now withdraw and leave the Afghans in a power vacuum. Our political leaders have a responsibility to do the most that they can to end this conflict for which our Armed Forces have sacrificed so much over the past eight years. The men and women of the Armed Forces must be given the best equipment and resources to do their job properly. It is a matter of utmost importance that the Government produce a coherent set of priorities and clear objectives which outline steps toward a regional peace and our eventual withdrawal.
Europe:	I voted in Parliament for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, as that is what the British people were promised. In my view the British people are due a referendum on the UK’s relationship with the EU. However, we cannot tackle all of Britain’s problems alone. It is clearer than ever that our fate is closely tied to what happens in other countries. The health of our economy is linked as never before to the health of those we trade with. In addition to the global economic crisis there is climate change, international crime, people-trafficking and terrorism, all of which cross borders. In the coming decades we will also face the rise of new superpowers such as China and India, which will cause a considerable shift in international politics. It is essential that we work with other European countries to help us all get through the economic recovery of the next few years and, in the long term, the political and environmental challenges of the coming century.
Immigration:	In my view, years of incompetence and an outright failure to plan for the effects of unprecedented immigration have led to a crisis of public confidence surrounding immigration. We must recognise that we can only secure the substantial economic and cultural benefits of immigration if we make the effort to plan for the impact and consequences of that policy. But since the Tories and Labour abolished exit checks in the 1990s, we have no way of knowing how many illegal immigrants live here. Liberal Democrats want an immigration system that works. A system that is firm but fair, which plans for the effects of managed legal migration and promotes integration. We believe in the benefits that immigration has brought this country but we do not believe our borders should be a soft touch. Liberal Democrats would take control of our borders and immediately reintroduce entry and exit checks. Our National Border Force would have the power of arrest. We will bring unscrupulous employers and people traffickers to justice. We will offer families who have been here for years and want to pay taxes a route to citizenship, provided they want to work, speak English and want to commit to the UK in the long term. We would also introduce a Regional Points-Based Immigration System to ensure that immigration is targeted on areas that are under-populated and want more immigration, like Scotland. We will make the asylum system for those fleeing real persecution fairer by taking responsibility away from the Home Office and giving it to a Canadian-style independent agency. We will end asylum-seekers’ dependence on benefits by allowing them to work to support themselves and their families.
Crime/Justice System:	The Lib Dems want to put up to 10,000 more police officers on the street, paid for by scrapping the hugely unpopular ID card scheme. We will make police forces accountable to elected local authorities, which are able to defend local priorities, set budgets and vary taxes where necessary. Local communities will have the power to tackle minor cases of anti-social behaviour through new community panels where offenders have to make amends to victims and communities through visible community sentences. I also want to make prisoners support their families and compensate their victims. The Lib Dems will ensure that progress is made towards better paid work for prisoners including a scheme in which a proportion of money earned will be paid into a common fund for victims. Prison-based work schemes will be expanded to provide previous offenders with realistic alternatives to crime, easing the pressure on the prison service and on the British tax payer. We will allocate resources to new secure mental health and drug treatment centres rather than new prisons. To help combat guns and gangs the Lib Dems will set up a 24–hour border force that would incorporate immigration, customs and police at all UK ports to stop the guns getting onto our streets. We will also ensure that areas where gun crime incidents are high are allocated additional resources and give local authorities and police real targeted power to tackle gun and gang crime locally.
Economy:	The Lib Dems were the only party to warn that Gordon Brown’s boom built on debt and vastly inflated house prices would lead to bust. Now we are the only party with a plan to stabilise the economy and crack down on the City. I want to ensure that bankers are never rewarded for taking short term risks at the expense of long term stability. To do this the Lib Dems want to separate banks so that people who simply want to save their money in a high street bank don’t have their money put at risk by investment banks taking high risk gambles. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives are prepared to take this important step. If a bank wants to take high risks we will regulate them to ensure that if it fails it doesn’t bring down the whole financial system and if it makes mistakes we will let it fail. I think that we need to rely less on the City of London as the cornerstone of our economy. With cheaper jobs and labour overseas, we need to make the most of our particular strengths: skilled workers and cutting edge technology and design. These attributes are perfectly suited to an economy based on Green technology, such as solar power, wave power and energy efficiency. I personally would like to see more effective Government initiatives to help promote this. The Lib Dems plan to take a green road out of recession. We will create a green fiscal stimulus package based on useful investment. This will include funding insulation and energy efficiency, insulating every school and hospital within the next 5 years, purchasing hundreds of new trains and investing in rail infrastructure, building 40,000 extra zero-carbon social homes and the roll-out of ‘smart #colspan#meters’ so everyone has one within the next 5 years.
Personal Tax:	I want to cut taxes for ordinary families and rebalance the tax system in order to help working families and lift those earning less than £10,000 a year out of tax altogether. This will give a tax cut of £700 to the typical working person and £100 to the average pensioner. This will be paid for by closing tax loopholes for the rich and introducing a tax on mansions worth over £2 million. The Lib Dems would also crack down on tax avoidance pursued by the very wealthy and big businesses.
Business Tax:	The Lib Dems want to cut business rates for small businesses and make Government contracting more transparent, to help smaller firms succeed. We will reduce the administrative burden on business, by reducing the regulatory demands made by Whitehall. We will consult with businesses to generate a list of specific regulations for repeal, reduction or simplification. The Lib Dems also will also end goldplating of European Directives. We will introduce independent checks on the costs and benefits of regulations.
Education:	As a former teacher, education is of particular interest to me. I want all children to get the best of starts in life. The Lib Dems will invest in shared parental leave so that parents get a real opportunity to bond with their children and offer free and high quality pre-school childcare to all. When it comes to school, every child is different, so teachers need to be free to teach children in different ways and get the very best from them. The Liberal Democrats will cut class sizes, set teachers free to spend more time in the classroom and raise standards in every school with more money for things like one to one tuition.
Unemployment:	Right now, newly unemployed people have to wait 12 months for the chance to get extra training or professional support to find a job. I believe everyone deserves help as soon as they find themselves out of work. The Lib Dems want to completely change the way Jobcentres help people find work. We don’t believe anyone should be forced to claim benefits for months before they can go on a training course or get help with interviews - we will do away with timetables and deadlines so that people can get help that fits their needs. Young people have been hit particularly hard by this recession and they need encouragement, support and practical help to improve their skills and enhance their work readiness. We need to keep young people within reach of the job market and we will do this by paying any young person completing an internship or work experience £55 a week for three months. At present only young people from better-off families can afford to build up their work experience; our proposals will mean up to 800,000 young people from all backgrounds will be able to take these opportunities. We will also increase the number of apprenticeships, and places on university and vocational higher education courses so young people can improve their skills and get qualifications that will help them capitalise when the job market recovers.
NHS:	The NHS treats most people very well but too many mistakes are still made and standards of care are patchy. We are fortunate that Poole Hospital is one of the best performing hospitals in the country, but nationally too much money is being wasted on bureaucrats. Doctors and nurses spend too much time trying to meet government targets rather than caring for patients. I believe that patients must come first and that services would improve if local people had a say in how the NHS is run. The Lib Dems will scrap targets and introduce a Patient’s Bill of Rights, to make sure that you get your treatment on time. If not, the NHS will pay for you to go to a private provider. Another way of improving standards would be to elect residents to local health boards. Local people are best able to determine the priorities of the NHS in their area so we will give local people control over their NHS by holding elections to health boards. The Lib Dems also want to end the inequity in NHS funding. We believe that each part of the country should get its fair share of NHS money and will set up a new independent body to allocate money where the NHS needs it, not where politicians want to channel it.
Environment:	Climate change is getting worse and could destroy our way of life. Liberal Democrats take the environment very seriously. We believe that there is a huge opportunity to recover from recession by going green – strengthening the economy, creating new jobs and improving the quality of people’s lives. We will insulate every home so that it is cheaper to keep warm and pollutes less. We will protect the parks, countryside and coastline. We will stop building nuclear power stations and instead use Britain’s natural resources of wind and wave power. The Liberal Democrats are the first party to aim for a carbon neutral Britain, where we absorb as much carbon as we emit by 2050. We will provide incentives for renewable technologies to speed up the move away from dirty energy to renewable energy and make Britain a greener, healthier place to live. Investing now in the green technologies of the future could deliver hundreds of thousands of new and better jobs in the years to come. I want to see pollution taxed, not people. We should reverse the decline in green taxation seen under Labour, and use the revenue to cut income tax for the worst off. The Lib Dems will cut income tax and increase taxes on carbon emissions and other resource usage that cause global warming. So the more you go green, the more money you save. The Liberal Democrats are also aware that the effects of climate change are already with us and can only be reduced, not avoided completely. Therefore, more needs to be done to adapt to changes in our weather. As recent years have shown, flood and sea defences urgently need improving.
Public/Local Council Services:	Too often people’s opinions about what happens in their area are ignored. Big developers and faceless bureaucrats have far more power than local families in deciding where new buildings go up, taxes we pay locally disappear into the Treasury and are spent elsewhere, and there’s a postcode lottery in too many public services. The Lib Dems want to axe Council Tax completely and replace it with the fairer Local Income Tax. Council Tax bears no relation to people’s ability to pay and penalises pensioners and people on low incomes, who pay a far higher proportion of their income in tax than the very rich. Local Income Tax is the fair and affordable alternative. Affordable housing is an issue that should be addressed locally by local authorities, not imposed by Government. The Lib Dems will release public sector land to Community Land Trusts, taking out the cost of buying land to develop, so they can build thousands of affordable homes for their local communities. We will end the unfair tax on Council tenants’ rent, allowing local councils to reinvest rent in building new social homes in their area. We will cut VAT on repair and renovation to encourage developers to repair and re-use empty buildings and brownfield land, rather than always building over the countryside. In areas where second homes are overwhelming the local housing market and harming local communities, we will give councils the power to require planning permission before turning another fulltime home into a holiday home. I also want to see control of Business Rates returned to local control so local people decide how their locally raised taxes are spent.
MP's expenses:	I remain appalled by the actions of certain MPs and stand by my original claim that those proven to have abused the expenses system should be prosecuted. In my view the expenses scandal is a symptom of our outdated political system, which is not fit for purpose. MPs with safe seats do not need to work hard for their communities, as they know that they will be voted in next time without much trouble. With no threat or external motivation, I think that many got to a point where they felt they could get away with anything. I believe that MPs’ expenses should be independently audited with receipts required for every penny. No MP should be able to play the property ladder at the tax payers’ expense. Importantly, local people should be given the right to sack their MP if it is proved that they have abused their position. This would help to stop the complacency we have seen from some MPs. I also think that we should cut the number of MPs by 150, which would save money and make it harder for any of the remaining MPs to get away without engaging in their work properly. In addition a cap should be put on political donations so no one can buy influence over our elected Parliament.

Expenses claimed:	"To be advised"
Claim History:	TBA
Claim History:	I have published details of my expenses on my website for a while now. Details are also available at TheyWorkForYou
Personal Additional Accommodation Exp:	As above

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