Jake Berry MP: Conservative Police and Crime Commissioners should end taxpayer funding for top officers' private healthcare

Jake Berry is the Member of Parliament for Rossendale and Darwen. Follow Jake on Twitter.

Figures revealed recently show ten forces spent £1.5m on the perk for top officers from their “hard pressed police budgets" in 2011; enough to pay for over 60 new Police Constables or 95 new PCSOs.

As Conservatives we should rightly be proud of our commitment to increase the NHS budget in each year of this parliament. However, for us to achieve this in the current constrained fiscal environment, other budgets have to be carefully managed. The Police budget has been no exception, with rank and file officers having to accept a once-in-a-generation change in pay and conditions, to balance the books and keep police on the front line.

Given all of this, it is an affront to every taxpayer that top officers receive free private health care. If the NHS is good enough for a bobby on the beat, injured in the line of duty, it is good enough for the top officers sat behind their desks.

The election of Police and Crime Commissioners is a chance to ensure that the Conservative principle of paying taxes to support the NHS is upheld; this should not extend to taxpayers paying private health premiums - after all why should we pay for the same thing twice?

This is why I have written to every Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner Candidate asking them to commit, when the opportunity arises, to stop taxpayers funding private healthcare in police forces.

If top officers taking home their six figure salaries wish to purchase private health cover, they are of course free to do so - but don't ask the taxpayer to foot the bill.

This is among the last vestiges of Labour’s Age of public sector excess; Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner candidates have the opportunity to end this unnecessary taxpayer funded perk.

Jake Berry MP: The Speaker does not need a taxpayer-funded mansion

Jake Berry is Member of Parliament for Rossendale and Darwen.  Follow Jake on Twitter.

2012 is for many reasons going to be a defining year for our country.  This summer we must have on display our national pride and remind the world that Great Britain remains great despite the tarnish of last year’s riots.

We should not be tempted, despite the tough economic times, to hold an austerity Olympics or for that matter diminish Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee in any way. However, austerity will reach into all parts of our society to pay for our national year of fun. 

The Palace of Westminster should not be immune from this and we must continue to seek ways of reducing the cost of Parliament and MPs.   In December this year, a leaked report on the future use of the Houses of Parliament stated we are “in an age of austerity where Parliament needs to sweat its assets” suggesting the Terrace could become an exclusive club, charging businesses £2000 a year to sip Champagne  by the Thames.

Other proposals include using the House of Commons logo commercially clearly demonstrating the potency of the brand of the Mother of all Parliaments.

Jake Berry MP: To build a fairer society benefits must become a “hand up” not a “hand out”

Jake Berry is MP for Rossendale and Darwen and Parliamentary Private Secretary to Grant Shapps MP, Minister for Housing.

“Fairness” is not the intellectual property of the Labour Party. Labour thinks limiting weekly benefits of £500 is unfair. That is rubbish. They say they represent the workers. But in the real world, hard working taxpayers increasingly think that a party that claims £500 a week in benefits is too little is simply out of touch with reality.

We, the Conservative Party, are the real party of the workers and the grafters and the people who pay tax. The Conservative Party represents the people across the country who work hard and earn less than £26 000 a year.

We get it. Conservative policy is all about being fair. We donʼt just talk about it - we are delivering fairness. Where I live, people would give their right arm to get a salary of £500 a week. Most of them are working full time and getting less than that.

People working full time in Rossendale and Darwen grossed £460 per week in 2010. In other words, their GROSS weekly salary was £40 a week (£2080) a year, LESS than the benefits caps introduced by the government.

Jake Berry MP: Booting out looters, muggers and arsonists is the social contract in action

Jake Berry is MP for Rossendale and Darwen and Parliamentary Private Secretary to Grant Shapps MP, Minister for Housing.

In the light of disgraceful looting and rioting across England last week, it is absolutely right that the Coalition Government should come forward promptly with proposals for stronger housing sanctions against those who choose to wreak havoc in people’s communities. At the heart of the motivations of those criminal looters, muggers and arsonists was a nihilist view – of being immune to any real consequence of their deeds, and lacking any sense of social responsibility for their actions.

Tougher eviction powers are not a knee jerk reaction; rather they are another marker of this Government’s consistent commitment to better balance the rights of victims with the rights of those who inflict misery on their neighbours and whole communities. As a housing lawyer prior to my election to Parliament, I have seen first hand the immense disruption and upset caused by the small number of people who are unwilling to function as responsible member of their community.

Earlier this month, the Department for Communities and Local Government published a consultation on a fast-track mandatory power of possession. This would apply where tenants had already been convicted by another court of a serious housing-related offence, had breached an injunction taken out against them by their landlord, or had their property closed because of the criminal activity taking place within it. This would help landlords with their existing powers of eviction where tenants or their children commit anti-social and criminal acts in the vicinity of their home.