20/01/2013 Sunday Politics East

Here Makan Eastman, moves to end the misery of pagan Lions. - Mac

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 2303 seconds

Welcome to Sunday Politics East. Later in the programme, a rise in

the number of people in this region being driven into payday loans.

not go anywhere near them, ever. They are very, very dangerous

spiral to get involved in. A new relationship with Europe - the

manifesto for change led by MPs in this region. There is a general

sense that the party backs the idea of reform and renegotiation and not

leaving and in that regard we are Riyaz one we do not -- with the

Prime Minister. First let's meet our guests, Labour's Kelvin Hopkins,

MP for Luton North, and Vicky Ford, Conservative MEP and rapporteur for

offshore oil and gas safety and the fiscal framework directive

overseeing the accountability of public spending. I want to start

with a quick word about the incinerator row. This week King's

Lynn MP Henry Bellingham, supported by other Norfolk MPs, has

criticised Norfolk County Council for the way it approved plans for a

waste incinerator in the town. is wrong for any council to ride

roughshod over local people when local people have made their --

their views crystal clear. Democracy is ill-served when we

have a consultation and then we ignore its findings. Vicky Ford,

protesters say that 93 % of protesters -- of people voted

against the scheme. This is a test of localism, isn't it? Yes, what is

the point of asking local people their views if you then don't

listen. As an MEP I try to stay well away from local issues because

it is the last thing we want, for me to get involved in local

planning issues, but I think the developers have these sort of

incinerators have done a really bad job in the UK at winning public

opinion. The public are not happy with these, they think there is a

lot of risk, and that is an issue across the UK, that people are

concerned about that. In Sweden they build them with viewing

galleries because people like them. Simon Wright, let's talk about the

localism issue. Are you are a fan of localism or do you think it

raises people's hopes about delivery? Localism is that the

heart of what Liberal-Democrats are tied with -- trying to achieve. To

have a council ride roughshod over local opinion, I agree, the way

they have gone about this is completely wrong. I was one of the

number of MPs who wrote to Eric Pickles, asking him to call in the

process. I am pleased he has done that. More from both are due in a

moment. Times are tight for everybody but some people find

themselves so desperate for cash that they end up taking out short-

term loans with extremely high interest rates. So-called payday

loans. There was growing concern about the effect they are having,

particularly because the number of people resorting to them has soared,

by 43 % last year, according to debt charity. Here in the East

unsecured debt is almost 5 % higher than the national average. Last

month the government pledged to Thai teak regulation, in a year's

time, but alternatives like credit unions are under growing pressure.

-- Titan Reg elect -- regulations. -- to tighten regulation. Laurie

Smith suffered after getting into a spiral of debt. It was ridiculously

easy for me to get those loans out, bearing in mind my credit history.

They can't have looked very thoroughly into my history. What

was bankrupt. It was a problem with her car that prompted her to borrow

�300 the started her cycle of debt. -- that started. I could not see a

way out, I had to earn more money or not spend as much, but I did not

have as much as I did before so that was hard. Concern over payday

loans has risen to such a level that the government, pushed into a

U-turn by the Lords, has given the plant authority the ability to

limit loans. Two -- too little too late for Linda. Not her real name.

Having lived with payday loans fur a good seven or eight years now, it

is just as well I am tough. -- for a good. The complete mental trauma,

you can't think of anything else. She was rescued by the local credit

union, who sorted out her finances. Certainly in the last year, 18

months, huge numbers of people coming with pay-day lanes, not just

one, several. -- payday loans. Even people who are not working, they

seem to be able to get the loans. While more and more payday loan

companies joined the market, many credit unions are struggling for

funds. Before Christmas we did not know whether we would have enough

money to lend to our members, let alone anybody who came in looking

for more emergency money. Credit unions need premises and money for

volunteers, something Cambridge City Council have this week decided

to fund, as well as money for riskier loans. They will have much

more sensible lakes of interest and they do not lock people into

punitive cycles. Another benefit is that the credit unions insist on a

saving element, which encourages responsible money management and

hopefully makes people less likely to get into these problems in the

future. It is when you are at your most vulnerable that they have got

you. Desperation will make you do things you would not normally

rationally do. People who use payday loans deserve more

protection, according to a report by the Office of Fair Trading, but

until recently the government has resisted taking action. I think

there are three things the government should do, one is to

deal with the obscene level of low pay in our economy, and they do

shoes at -- they should do something about capping interest

rates, which they do across much of Europe, even in the United States.

The government should do that now and not wait until 2014. The third

thing is they should open access to alternative forms of capital.

Without action, 2013 could be a year of opportunity for companies

like these. Earlier this week Debra Matt Goss

will come -- Russell Hammond from the consumer finance Association,

which represents about -- around 70 % of the payday loan market. She

asked him if people are being exploited because they are

vulnerable. Most people are not vulnerable, they are financially

stressed, they might be on low incomes or even at medium in comes

and they are managing their budget in an uncertain economy. -- even

medium in comes. Do you think there should be better regulation? When

you look at the way people are using payday loans and the

popularity of the product and the level of growth in response to the

fact that that is what consumers want and we are providing, if you

take that into context and you make sure that you have good standards

of round it and there are industry standards as well as the statutory

regulations that exist, and the major players are come -- complying

with those, then you have a strong and competitive market. I do accept

that some areas need improvement. When any -- when an industry is

young and growing quickly it is inevitable that you will have some

teething problems. As a body we are addressing those. Vicky Ford, this

is more than just teething problems, isn't it? Absolutely. I am very

pleased that there is going to be better regulation of this industry.

I went to see the food bank in Haverhill in autumn and they give

debt advice. They told me there are 400 different ways that people on

lower income has can access this sort of credit, 400 different

moneylenders in one town. Isn't the point that if people were paid a

decent wage on minimum grade -- minimum wage they would not have to

resort to these high-interest loans? I am not sure that is just

be issued. Sometimes people are borrowing to mend their cars. It is

a bit like credit cards, everybody offering more and more credit and

lowering the credit, taking credit from one lender and another and

another, and that explodes the whole thing. In September I wrote

to the Chancellor about this because part of my concern is that

if it is not regulated in the UK it will get regulated in Europe. What

I have seen, for example, in the mortgage market is that when you

leave it up to Europe to regulate their come up with a one-size-fits-

all piece of regulation that does not solve the problem. Vicky

talking about Europe there. Of course the United States has banned

payday loans in some states. Should we look at banning them here?

certainly need to regulate them properly. 0 was concerned to hear

the cases in those Riddick -- their video. -- I was concerned. They are

not unique, I visited the Citizen's Advice Bureau in Norwich and they

said it was a growing problem. The problem with these loans is that

people take them out and sometimes they will get another one out to

pay for the first one and there is a spiral and it becomes incredibly

problematic for those individuals. We need to strengthen consumer

protection. The financial conduct authority will have the tools it

needs to do that. In the short term, because the body is not in place to

do that yet... Not until 2014. There is an issue about timescales.

In the meantime government has been working with the industry to bring

forward a new code of practice for consumers. I have met the senior

management team of wonder, and they said our business model is

fantastic. In which case, if you think you are doing the right

things, you should not be against proposing a set of regulations that

means that other lenders who are not operating to the standards that

you say are OK cannot do it. Clearly people are getting into

problems from multiple lenders, when you have loan after loan, and

it is not just the interest rate that is the issue. I think we need

to look at it and we also need to encourage banks to be lending more.

We are going to leave the subject there because I want to move onto

the big one of Europe, which have caused has dominated discussion in

Westminster this week. Even by the Prime Minister's long awaited

speech on Britain's future role in the UK has been postponed, that has

not hampered MPs from our region from having their say, with many

taking a leading role in the debate. Europe plays a large part in the

life of this region. 64 % of our trade is with the EU, far higher

than the national average. Millions of pounds of European funding has

gone into improving towns like Great Yarmouth and the transport

upgrade in Cambridgeshire. The region has also been affected by

immigration of course, with many workers taking up farm work in the

Fens. A growing number of Conservatives believe it is time

for a rethink. This week the fresh Start group called for repatriation

of powers from Europe, including taking control of social

legislation and restricting the right of emigrants to claim

benefits. It puts pressure on public services but more

importantly it causes a lot of resentment if the speed of

immigration is too fast. If there is a sense that people are coming

here to benefit from the benefits system rather than to work. There

is another issue - in my constituency employment levels are

very good but in other parts of the East, where unemployment is high,

there is a sense where in a great - - immigrant workers are taking jobs

that British people could do. What we don't want is to see the added

level of resentment that comes from people coming here to claim

benefits. A paper has been launched which claims the benefits of the

single market were vastly overrated and it could be more beneficial to

the UK economy to pull out altogether. The MP for North Essex

can tell us more about that. This region, 64 % of trade is with

Europe. Do you think we would be better out? Can I correct you to

start with, the paper does not says that. It simply asks the question,

is the single market really worth it? We are constantly told because

it is the be-all and end-all of our European membership, the overriding

reason why we have to stay in. People used to argue we would have

to join the single currency in order to preserve the single market.

We are asking, what is the balance of advantage? Overall for the

United Kingdom economy, though we do export quite a substantial

amount of our goods to the European Union, we actually export more

outside of Europe as a whole. Even if we did leave the single market

we would still be a trading gateway to Europe. I am interested in one

of the other claims, that the UK economy would create more jobs if

it didn't face the costs and burdens of the EU. Could you give

me an example? If you look at it this way, if you look at the total

of the UK economy, the UK economy exports probably less than 8.7 % of

GDP to the European Union. We only export, we don't export all but to

do the year, most of it is domestic and to non-EU countries. We have to

accept even rigged election on 100 % of our economy for that 8.7 %,

making it more expensive for us to export to China. This week, there

was cutting jobs because they can't export to Europe because Europe is

in decline. Exports to the rest of the world are growing but we bear

the costs of EU regulation and a contribution to the EU budget in

order to be a member of the Union. What do you make of the fresh Start

approach? There are a lot of approach is going around, fresh

start is one of them. If you ask the simple question, should Britain

have the right to make its own laws, that is what democracy is about. At

the moment more and more laws are being made by the European Union in

the name of the single market when all we wanted was the trade. A new

relationship, and this is where I agree with David Cameron, is where

-- is what we need, our relationship based on trade and

political corporation, not laws being made by institutions which

increasingly will govern a federal state that we don't want to be Pat

-- be part of. -- co-operation are the Liberal Democrats a lone voice

in this region in favour of the EU? It is a fantasy to imagine we can

Ula -- unilaterally renegotiate the terms of the EU. At there is no way

to base that as a starting point. We need to focus on leading in

Europe building -- and building allies with other nation-states to

reform the way the EU works. We know that we can make the free

market work more effectively, we know we do -- we need to do more to

cut red tape and to introduce political reforms such as the Crazy

to-ing and fro-ing between Brussels and Strasbourg, but we can only do

this by building relationships within the union. We have had the

fresh Start approach, where do you stand on everything? As somebody

who has been campaigning for reform and a referendum for five years, I

can wait a week or two before the Prime Minister's speech, but I

think he is going to give us that. I think be in or out debate is

simplistic. The status quo does not exist any more. We are not part of

the eurozone or the monetary union, we can't be in the fisting or

banking union, so that rules they are making for the eurozone, you

can't cut and paste that on to the 10 countries outside the eurozone.

The status quo is changing already. Be out debate is a concern for a

lot of our business because they don't want to end up with laws in

Brussels which affect British businesses but without them being

able to have an negotiation on those rules. Fresh start has

started to look at the detail of these negotiations and I am really

pleased with that, that we have started to say not the simplistic

in or out suggestion... Why d'you think we have so many Euro-sceptics

in this region? I think we have a lot of big issues. Take the

immigration discussion mentioned before. Migration but work is one

thing, migration for health care or welfare is a different issue. It is

not just the UK but has an issue with that. In the fresh Start

document they name 12 other countries in Europe who have named

this as an issue. Last week a German MPs agreed on that issue.

Simon Wright, Nick Clegg has said that a referendum would cause five

years of uncertainty, damaging the country. This is going to cause

another rift in the coalition, isn't it? There are about 3.5

million jobs in the UK and at a time when we know the economy is

fragile why do we want to undermine confidence in investment within the

UK? I want to squeeze in the political round-up of the week.

Here it comes. Winter white out across the East as

sub-zero blizzard conditions brought chaos for travellers.

Police were putting in extra hours but it was the scrapping of

military police at Colchester that worried the town's MP. I urge the

minister at least to reinstate some of the police. Runway clearance was

under way at Stansted but in Southend it looks like council cuts

have grounded the summer air show. While all councils faced tight

budgets, the Corby MP thinks that switching off street lighting is a

step too far. It means people are frightened to go out at night,

increasing crime. Dangerous driving at whatever time of day was the

focus for Jamie Bulger's parents, who joined their MP to lobby the

government on sensing. Only one or three of these drivers goes to jail,

and only one in 10 for more than five years.

Let's pick up on the issue of street lights. Simon Wright, switch

them off for keep them on? Keep them on. At this time of year

particularly be brisker accidents on icy pavements and roads across

no doubt Northamptonshire and also Norfolk, of course that will make

things more dangerously. -- at the risk of accidents. It would save

money, wouldn't it? Yes, but I was at Tilbury power station and unless

we renegotiate our energy laws would be you a lot more lights will

be going off. -- with the EU. you are stargazer, Simon Wright?

have been quite interested in the BBC programme, Star-gazing, but no,

I am not one myself. Thank you both very much indeed. That is all we