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Commons vote on Gurkhas was moral triumph - for The Inverness Courier
THE House of Commons has finally voted to support the claim of former Gurkha soldiers to live in this country.
After the government again shamefully tried to deny these people the right to live here, MPs of all parties united behind a Liberal Democrat motion and the government was defeated.
This defeat was significant for a number of reasons. For the Gurkhas and their families it was the culmination of a long campaign which I have been proud to support.
Sadly, it was reported that one of these frail campaigners had died on the very day that Parliament voted.
It was a victory for persistence — for campaigning Gurkhas and their parliamentary supporters too. It was a clear victory for refusing to take no for an answer in a good cause.
But most of all it was a moral victory — for ordinary decency. In the end this came down to a simple question: should people prepared to lay down their lives for this country not also have the right to live here?
A government that couldn't see the right answer to that question has truly lost touch with the values of the people.
BUDGET FAILED THE HIGHLANDS
The Budget was a sobering event for anyone who doubted the severity of the economic crisis. Even Mr Darling's bleak forecasts were promptly condemned as over-optimistic by many independent economic commentators.
Only by making some fairly unlikely assumptions about how quickly the economy will grow next year has Mr Brown's government been able to say that it can balance the books in future.
What we needed from the government were some of the measures that would have made a specific difference here in the Highlands. The chancellor totally failed to deliver the help we need for local people who are struggling in the face of the recession.
With incomes here lower than average, we needed to see tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes. Liberal Democrat proposals would put £700 back into the pockets of the vast majority of Highland families.
That would make a real difference to people struggling to make ends meet.
There was a lot more that could have been done to raise money from the wealthiest and clamp down on tax avoidance. All that money should be used to cut taxes for the majority.
Some very modest measure to ask the very richest to pay a bit more were included in the budget, but the opportunity to use that to cut the taxes on the poorest was missed.
Mr Darling has failed to take on board the proposals to cut Highland Council's housing debt payments. The idea that the council and Highland MPs put to the Treasury was for the government to forego the council's £15 million annual debt repayments in return for a guarantee that money would be spent on job-creating housing projects.
That is bitterly disappointing and will prevent hundreds of jobs being created locally.
We also needed to see a fuel duty discount scheme for the Highlands. A car is a necessity here and a lower rate of duty would have reflected that.
Instead we will see rises in fuel duty across the board without any relief in remote and rural areas. In the past three months fuel prices in Scotland have risen by 8.6p on average — more in many places in the Highlands.
By piling on the pain, without any relief for rural areas, the government shows a total failure to understand how the Highland economy works.
VICTORY SENDS BYPASS MESSAGE
Thank-you to all the people in Inverness West who voted to give Alasdair Christie a landslide majority in the by-election.
The scale of this victory sends a clear message to Scottish ministers that their refusal to fund our bypass will not be tolerated by local people.
Alasdair, Alex Graham, John Farquhar Munro and myself will be doing our best to make sure that message is finally listened to in Edinburgh.
Posted on: 05/05/2009
