A London United Not Divided

Written by Fiyaz Mughal and published in At a Press Conference in Finsbury Central where the First Aisan Liberal Democrat MP in the UK got elected in 1892 (Dadabhai Naoroji). Press Conference held on Fri 12th Oct 2007

Fairness Localism Social and Financial Equality, A London United Not Divided

CAPITAL OF EUROPE A WORLD IN ONE CITY

My Vision for London

My vision for London is based on these four pillars: fairness, social and financial equality, localism and community cohesion. London should be an economic powerhouse and a great place to live. Of course, it's easy to say you believe in those things - who wouldn't sign up to them? So this is what those four key pillars have come to mean to me over my career in charity and community work and in politics.

1. What do I mean by fairness? Everyone has the same opportunities, everyone is treated the same way, everyone gets the same high standard of public services and everyone contributes. It is my view that we can best work towards this by implementing radical social and financial policies, devolving decision making to local communities and fighting discrimination and inequality. So you could say that fairness overarches everything I want to do with London.

2. What do I mean by social and financial equality? There are many for whom daily living is an uphill struggle and many areas and communities where exclusion has become the norm. London is the perfect place to get radical policies going that tackle these problems and get the whole community to work on solving them.

3. What do I mean by localism? The current Mayoralty is so autocratic that local people in the greatest city on earth cannot make their own decisions, especially about urban planning and community needs, and it does not have to be like that. There is so much great local energy in London - whether it's political activism, entrepreneurship, one-issue local interest groups - and a lot of my policies will involve tapping into that.

4. What do I mean by community cohesion? Unfortunately the diversity of London, which is its strength, is consistently questioned, particularly by politicians of the right hoping to capitalise on the fearful ignorance of voters. And clumsy anti-terrorism legislation drives London's communities further apart every day. This whole process needs to stop as a matter of urgency.

I will bring my twelve years experience in charity and community work to the task of cleaning up poverty in London. I will demonstrate so clearly through my radical policies the social and economic benefits of diversity that any politicians trying to divide and rule amongst Londoners will find their guns spiked for good because no-one will take them seriously. My vision is that diversity, innovation and social entrepreneurialism can and should drive the future of London, allied with genuinely local planning, better co-ordinated regeneration and a policing system that unites and protects London's communities. Londoners should feel proud of their city and their locality and their basic civil and human rights.

My Policies

Transparent governance

The GLA currently costs some £73m per year. The Mayor has brought in advisers from his Labour days and some appointments have been pushed through with little regard to outside scrutiny.

The Mayor has also shown his contempt for the London Assembly. Not enough reports are laid before it, not enough oral hearings are attended by the Mayor or his aides.

As Mayor of London I would:

• Address this damaging lack of democracy practiced by the current Mayor via the London Assembly itself, following the provisions of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 in respect of the Mayor's accountability in both letter and spirit.

• Abandon the unelected advisor system and return to the cabinet system involving elected Assembly members.

• Set a further voluntary standard for the Mayor to attend at least 10 sub-regional London 'Question Times' with the public throughout London.

• I would set up People's Recruitment Panels and invite Londoners to take part in the selection of key GLA employees.

• Make a new, broader assessment of what the Mayor could achieve for Londoners through foreign relations. I do believe London should have a capsule foreign policy because it is a world-class city with an intensely multicultural population. The Mayor has great potential to reach out to communities with links to London and make London a beacon city for the liberal message.

• Scrap the Mayor's European Policy office which is an expensive way to lobby and reassess London's needs in the context of Europe.

• Any projects in this area would be fully explained to Londoners before I undertook them. Anyone who undertakes foreign relations work for the Mayor should be subject to the same stringent code of conduct that elected councillors are in terms of financial and behavioural prudence.

Urban planning

The Mayor's Housing strategy is to be applauded for its focus on putting up lots of new affordable housing. But there are two major flaws with the implementation. The first is that there is an army of academics out there carrying out major research into the quality of life element in new housing, into designing out crime and strengthening infrastructure and it is not being used. At these building rates, this is reckless - do we want to go the way of the 1950s and 1960s again. The second flaw is that Mayor is increasingly setting planning priorities himself without reference to the local authorities who know their area best and are directly accountable to the people. The Mayor's powers stand to grow still more in this area.

As Mayor of London I would:

• Return planning decisions to local authorities who are accountable to local people and know their areas' needs best.

• Promote the vision of a London rebuilt by Londoners which utilises the entire range of Londoners' talents from academic research into urban planning to upskilling local people so that they can take part in local infrastructure improvement.

• Showcase innovation in our housing planning by promoting more schemes like the BedZed development in Croydon.

• Use the Mayor's compulsory purchase powers to free up some of the 91,000 empty homes in London for occupation by Londoners, and encourage boroughs to do the same.

• Encourage the development of further shared equity schemes - like the one I am involved with in Haringey.

Regeneration

Everyone is talking about it, and the funding is out there. Enough of the bureaucracy and administration costs associated with managing the regeneration budgets - the information on these large numbers of funding streams also needs simplifying and fast. The Mayor has been called a Zone 1 Mayor; I am afraid that he has also become a Sectarian Mayor splitting up sectors of London for development and regeneration and missing the bigger picture.

As Mayor of London I would:

• Create a central co-ordinated body to provide guidance and information on regeneration funding to local authorities and community and voluntary organisations.

• Actively push finance towards grass roots organisations who reach out to the socially excluded and hard to reach groups.

• Bring the Olympics back into every Londoner's vision of the future. It has become a stand-alone event, with only a few boroughs on the Lea Valley Corridor feeling involved.

• Look at the potential of the 70 hectares of surplus land owned by Network Rail, TfL, the NHS and other central bodies. The release of this land should be negotiated and consultations held in the boroughs as to their use, whether it be to provide housing, a community centre - or whatever is needed to promote the social and economic development of that locality.

Environment

A solid environmental policy that leads us into a sustainable future is now the only option for London. It is not an area for posturing, but an area for instant action. I would personally like to see less finger-wagging on environmental issues and more enthusing about how great our lives would be if we all made a concerted effort to drive London towards carbon neutrality - I think Londoners will respond to a positive vision.

That is why my policy ideas - some drawn directly from the party's policies and some my own - range from rewards for environmental behaviour to big-scale flagship carbon-free projects that will change the look of London.

As Mayor I would:

• Promote restoration and development of the character of high streets, market squares and open spaces throughout London.

• Support the building of an offshore wind farm in Thames Estuary to help power the tube network.

• Introduction of a Green Smart Card (to accompany the oyster in Londoners' card wallets) which will earn points through green purchases and these points can be redeemed against travel costs.

• Work with supermarkets to provide bins at their exits for customers to remove excess packaging before they leave the shop.

• Ensure all housing estates had composting facilities, and as an adjunct I would ask Local Authorities to investigate whether waste land on estates could be turned over to market garden use for community projects, or even for leasing for that purpose local enterprises (which would then employ local people)

• Set aside green bus and taxi routes which cannot be used by cars - a radical measure to discourage traffic.

• Review cycle routes and ensure they are as safe and pleasant to use as possible - get rid of the notorious danger spots within the London cycle network.

• Encourage pedestrianisation, in addition to flagship projects in central London, by making signposts pedestrian-friendly - e.g. by giving estimated walking times.

• Investigate opening up London's ancient waterways. There are dozens of old canals and brooks all over London which have been covered up. They can be renovated as pedestrian walkways, cycle paths and even as potential commuter routes - all we need is for some bright Londoner to come up with a water-bourne version of the commuter scooter!

Community cohesion and integration

The current Mayor is a divisive character, both in his outspokenness and in his extremely vocal views on flashpoint issues like the Middle East. His undoubted focus on this area unfortunately cannot make up for that. What we need is a Mayor whose first priority is to unite communities.

Lack of integration causes social and economic miseries for those marginalised, it contributes indirectly to the security threats London faces and it also drives a large informal economy - which pays no taxes and therefore plays no part in the legitimate development of London. Exclusion of communities encourages radicalisation of young men who feel they have no part to play in London society. And if we have already failed to integrate one generation, what are the prospects for the future? Following the A8 Accession Treaty, further mass immigration particularly from Poland has swelled the workforce and changed the face of London. This time, we must not let our new Londoners down.

As Mayor of London I would:

• Use my twelve years of expertise in interfaith dialogue and promoting good community relations to be a truly unifying figure.

• Push more resources towards the provision of ESOL (English as a Second Language) courses in which funding is currently being cut.

• Produce a blueprint for a Citizen Induction Programme to be implemented as soon as immigrants arrive or are granted leave to remain - this will make them feel welcome, prepare them for the cultural change, and provide information on all topics from opening a bank account to crossing the road correctly. Above all, the programme will make plain that some cultural practices are unacceptable in the UK, such as honour killings and female genital mutilation.

• Encourage new interfaith initiatives like the twinning of faith centres from different religions.

• Encourage the formation of properly elected and representative councils of e.g. Muslims and Poles at local level to form two-way contact.

• Lobby local authorities, especially their library services, to ensure that books they source on Islam are widely spread across the range of knowledge. At the moment in some libraries right now there are books in children's sections promoting an extreme version of Islam.

• Promote throughout the GLA a systematic acknowledgement that the A8 Accession Treaty has changed the face of London.

• Encourage local authorities to appoint suitably qualified linguistic officers to be contact points for the non-English speaking communities in their borough.

• Put in place projects of co-operation with the Home Office and relevant Embassies to look at ways of preventing vulnerable females from certain target countries being drawn into prostitution.

• Gather together all the excellent research being carried out into the economic lives of the Eastern European, Somalian and Turkish communities, in certain faith groups and in young white male populations from lower socio-economic brackets - as a group they are suffering social and financial exclusion and are feeding problems back into London as a result.

• Create a permanent Inclusion Committee to look at all these findings and draw up policies to bring people from these marginal groups back to the heart of London life. The Inclusion Committee would also work closely with the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights (CEHR).

• Promote more investment into breaking down mental cultural barriers between communities - there is real ghettoisation in Tower Hamlets.

• I am opposed to funding of faith schools from state coffers and believe anyone who wants to build faith schools

• Aggressively target extremist organisations (including the BNP - who are polarised on opinion but similar in attitude to extremist faith-based organisations).

• Lobby for further recruitment of women in police work and particularly in intelligence work because as lynchpins of more traditional communities they have a vital role to play.

• Promote the separation of faith from the operations of the state

• Promote programmes that physically take individuals beyond the UK to get an understanding of where London's communities are coming from culturally.

• Institute an induction process for new citizens and go beyond snap tests - a series of review meetings would take place in the final three months before the test to assess by interview those elements which will not be picked up by testing.

Policing

There needs to be a liberal voice on the safety and security issue, otherwise the entire safety and security agenda ends up in the hands of the Labour and Conservative parties. We as Liberal Democrats need to show that having effective policies to combat crime and terrorism need not be at the expense of individuals' civil liberties.

• The protection of civil liberties is absolutely essential to a free state. A Code of Civil Liberties or a Bill or Rights should be developed specifically for London with reference to the Human Rights legislation. It should tackle in particular the prominent threats to Londoners' civil liberties regarding the collection and distribution of their personal data.

• More visible policing makes people feel safer. Any increase in police resources must however be accompanied by checks and balances against misuse of powers. Police should also be free from paperwork and bureaucracy and be out on the streets where they are needed.

• Safer Neighbourhood Teams have had a rough ride in the press since they were first formed. Yet, our Police Officers and Police Community Support Officers on the beat do a dangerous job and need support. Funding for Safer Neighbourhood Teams needs to be ring-fenced and further assurances given that their budget allocations will not change until 2012 when they will be most needed.

• The public need clear information on when they can access the Safer Neighbourhood Team since there are mixed messages as to when members of the public can call 999 and when they can access their local Safer Neighbourhood Team.

• Safer Neighbourhoods Teams should have attached youth workers to co-ordinate work on youth crime.

• The increase of knife and gun crime among young Londoners is a massive concern. In the long-term, my focus on financial and social inclusion programmes would resolve the background issues, but in the short-term, I would introduce knife detectors as mandatory in secondary schools and Further Education colleges to send a strong message.

• Policing should not use profiling and thus alienate the communities that we are trying to work with. The Mayor claims there isn't a problem and refuses to lobby the MPA to look into this issue, but peripheral studies suggest that whatever techniques the Metropolitan Police Service are using it is causing problems with inter-community relations. This is getting us nowhere. I would consult with the Metropolitan Police Authority to discuss ways of boosting intelligence-led policing. I would like to see the use of the infamous "stop and search" powers scaled down on the ground, to prove to the government that it is not necessary and doesn't work. More than ever, we need to bring on side those very communities that we want to work with to combat terrorism. Blanket profiling helps no-one and is counter-productive.

• I would push for MPA recruitment drives from particularly the newer migrant communities, Eastern European, Somali and Albanian/Kosovar being prominent among them, and introduction of schemes to make these officers contact points and role models for their communities.

Transport

Advances have been made under Ken Livingstone's mayoralty. There has been investment in the tube and the congestion charge is a success - although as with all bold initiatives there are improvements to be made. There is also much more that can be done.

• Crossrail has been under-advertised, with the resultant outpouring of bad press we are now witnessing. The undoubted benefits to local businesses where the line will run have not been spelt out. A London Business Rate tax is the current idea for paying for the works. If we are going to expect the businesses affected to pay it, we need to get a good communications package out to them. In other words for the added cost, what will they get?

• Management of London Underground is improveable. Better management techniques need to be put in place both on everyday tasks like reacting to signalling and track problems and the long term capital projects. A lot of money has been spent on LU staff and the management good practice needs to be there to allow them to perform at their best.

• LU must regularly meet with Unions. The recent strikes highlight failures in people management and basic relationship building with relevant stakeholders. Pay deals need to be set for 3 year periods and include inflationary costs and a performance related element so that staff have incentives. However, this would be a 'no-strike' agreement and to protect workers rights to dissent, an automatic arbitration mechanism would kick in to resolve major problems and which had the backing of more than 50% of union members.

• Many of the measures under Environment are relevant here, including the designation of green bus and taxi routes, the promotion of cycling and pedestrianism, and the opening up of waterways.

Debt and child poverty

Private debt is among the fastest growing social problems in the UK. We need financial advice and financial literacy to be a part of life to keep people out of debt and to stop them turning to "loan sharks" in an attempt to manage their debts.

As Mayor of London, I would:

• Add my voice to the many calls for financial management to be part of education

• Ensure funding streams are more efficiently directed towards local charities working on the problem of debt. As a Citizens' Advice officer I know the funding is out there - but application and provision is astonishingly chaotic.

• Ensure that programmes aimed at tackling financial exclusion make proper use of credit unions and Community Development Finance Initiatives - these services are already there, we just need to join up the various efforts and use grass roots organisations properly

• Make the London Development Agency a proper co-ordinating centre for all financial exclusion initiatives across London - not just an extra layer on top.

• Explore ways to upskill parents as part of London's economic development strategy - this will have the dual purpose of enabling a whole untapped sector of Londoners to play a part in future economic growth, and lifting more people - and their dependents - out of poverty.

• Use my awareness as a Citizens Advice Officer of the so-called "tsunami of worklessness" sweeping through outer London as migrants leave the centre in search of work. We need to be ready with strategies to help upskill them and build them into the local projects for the new London I want to develop. The message here will be Build your own London!

Local enterprise

There is so much entrepreneurial energy in London and it is frustrating to see the current Mayor's focus concentrate on the City and the West End. If more Londoners were helped to follow their ambitions, communities would become stronger, better-resourced and more self-sufficient. Imagine what we could do with all that energy - suppose provision of goods and services and employment became more local, suppose people didn't have to travel into zones 1 and 2 to work and could get more of what they needed in their own localities from people they knew! Not pie in the sky, but a real possibility if only we can enable Londoners to deliver it.

As Mayor of London I would:

• Access to finance is still a problem for some Londoners, particularly for migrant groups from the A8 Accession states.

• Programmes to conquer the language barrier will help open up possibilities for more London communities, as will the measures outlined in my "Debt and child poverty" section.

• Create a joined-up policy on the provision of business advice and information for small businesses - there are so many sources of information but no collation.

• Put across a London-wide vision to encourage someone thinking of starting a business, using the key message - London helps itself

London resources

All these measures require accurate information about the community of London as it is today. Just walking down a street will tell you that the population has changed beyond recognition since the 2001 census. I believe a London census should be taken as soon as possible, without waiting until 2011, so that resources can be targeted suitably.

Why should Liberal Democrats trust me to deliver?

I have the political experience… I have twice been a City Councillor, managing to win difficult seats from Labour and the Green party, I have been a Deputy President of the Party and have worked with NGOs for over 12 years. I have also been at the helm of campaigning in the Party on minority issues and was Chair of the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats between 2002 and 2006. In 2005 in the wake of the London bombings I was appointed to the Government's Prevention of Extremism Task Force as a moderate British Muslim community leader.

I have a growing media profile… I have regularly conducted radio, television and other media-related work over the past five years. I have defended Party positions on the BBC, Radio 4, the Asian Network radio station, The Voice and Eastern Eye newspapers. I have worked tirelessly with Black and Ethnic Minority media outlets to promote inclusion within the Party.

I am an effective and experienced campaigner… I have campaigned on anti-social behaviour, crime and community safety, public spending, council tax and on welfare rights for the financially and socially excluded. I have also vigorously campaigned on the rising threats to our civil liberties and on regeneration funding issues. I have campaigned across a whole range of techniques - in the 1980s I was marching in London for an end to discrimination against ethnic minorities and the gay/bisexual communities; most recently I have been leading work with Citizens Advice on the needs of the Eastern European communities in London.

I have the leadership and co-ordination skills… I am Chief Executive Officer and Director of two NGOs in North London providing advice and information to the public, and one organisation which undertakes community cohesion work between faith communities.