Nic Dakin's People Panel

It has been a year since Nic Dakin Took over as our elected representative, so the panel was to focus on what he believes he has achieved this year in accordance with his pledges laid out during his campaign.

I have met Nic Dakin Many times and corresponded with him via phone and email many times. He does come across as a genuine person (even though he is labour). He tries to speak plainly and not in the double speak you find most career politicians.

His 5 pledges were:

I will run a local office that gives the highest quality of service.
I will do my very best to ensure a fair deal for local people.
I will work with businesses and others as an ambassador for Scunthorpe.
I will be transparent and open in how i carry out my role as MP.
I will work to protect and improve health, education and other public services.

If we start with the first pledge. He and his staff have assisted over 1000 individual constituents with personal cases and issues which must be commended. Most of these issues have been with CSA, benefits and housing. He also supported a particular campaign about getting the post-box on Oxford Street in Ashby replaced. He has offered opportunities to students to do work experience in his office. This has been good but the young involved are all Labour supporters and I’m sure that they are students that are not of the Labour persuasion that would like to benefit from this but don’t get the chance.

His second pledge is a bit more 'washy' as he claims to ensure a fair deal for local people, and what is fair for one person is not fair for another person. Fairness is a point of view and since his point of view stems from Labour party principles they are not the same as mine. He may very well share his principles of fairness with a large proportion of the populace but not with me and not with a number of people I know. He does continue to argue in parliament for greater care in changes to the disability allowance and who could argue with this. We all want to see the help go to those who need it and taken away from the people who don’t. He is supporting the Age UK's campaign for retirement age women who have seen the goalposts moved on when they can get the pensions they are entitled to. He has supported the local provider of legal aid debt advice, arguing for the retention of legal aid debt advice in the future, which is good because it is the governments over taxing of the people that causes debt for some people in the first place. He also supports the local CAB. He says he works closely with the other MP's in the region.

He has been developing links with business such as Tata and has got himself on the Finance Bill Committee so he can raise questions about how government intends to support manufacturing, which I think many on this website agree is very important. Getting manufacturing going again in this country is a sure fire way of growing ourselves out of the trouble we are in. He has also been supporting proposals for a pan-Humber local enterprise partnership and enterprise zone which could be a huge boost to manufacturing in the region.

As for transparency, he couldn’t be more see thorough if he tried, which is what we expect from our MPs since the expenses fiasco. He publishes all his expenses on the website and posts a weekly diary. He constantly tweets and posts on facebook. In fact he tries so hard to let people know what he is doing and when he is doing it that I get the sense he is trying hard to impress those who would follow his actions as our MP. He does respond, as far as i am aware to all emails. Even the ones i send him berating him for some stupid thing i think he is wasting his time on or to have a go at him for not voting on an EDM or bill in parliament but he is there with an email response whether you like the answer or not. I don’t know about others but he has always responded.

Improving Health, education and other public services are being followed by him but whether or not he has been able to provide alternative solutions to any problems within these sectors is questionable. the changes announced by the ruling government seem to be pressing ahead like a juggernaut and whether his position on the many committees he has got himself on will enable him to offer some other viable solutions to the government changes won’t be seen until he tells us, although he is leading a cross party argument to allow hospices the ability to reclaim VAT on non-business supplies which seems to me a very sensible action as it these voluntary services that will take over from the NHS in the future and they shouldn’t have to pay VAT when the previous service did not.

There were many other things mentioned in his annual report and I have picked a few for this article. To read in full the report he presented at the panel you will need to go to his website. i did ask Nic personally to post it on his website because we should all see what he is doing in our name.

He did have some Q&A after he presented his report and a local reporter from the Scunthorpe telegraph did interview me and some others during the break but disappeared before I could ask what type of article was going to be written or what of my statement to her was going to be included. It’s probably the question I asked Nic about the government’s stance on private citizens being allowed to pay in advance for their children to go to university. Since the government has said they will allow charities and business to pay in advance I think the private citizen should be allowed to do so as well. If not the money I have been saving has been for no reason at all.

There was a large presence from the steel industry but they seemed to be intent on making statements to the panel rather than asking questions. With the announcement from Tata steel I was expecting this.

There were questions about education, the health service and expenses with the last question about expenses not really being answered by Nic. He was asked if the MP David Laws should face the same treatment that Elliot Morley did. He dodged answering the question like a true politician, by giving an answer that was not really an answer. I followed up the question by asking him for his personal opinion on the matter but he didn’t seem comfortable giving a personal opinion. If it were me I would have simply said 'I hope the police and the parliamentary standards committee treat him just as they did Elliot Morley'

I’m going to have to finish up now (dinner time) but in finishing I must say that Nic has tried his best for a first year new MP and I hope it continues since he does seem to have our best interests at heart. Let’s see how the next year goes.