Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg launched my party’s General Election campaign this week with honest pledges and a promise to bring real change to Britain. At the last General Election, the Lib Dems stood out as a very distinctive with plans for free personal care for the elderly and free university education by scrapping tuition fees - with my over £10,000 student debt in mind, I clearly think the latter is very important. However with the deep recession and huge deficit the Lib Dems are saying, very simply and honestly that those promises maybe unaffordable at the start of a Lib Dem Government. So my party is making 4 key pledges: 1) Fair taxes - a commitment to make the first £10,000 you earn tax-free. People earning less than £10,000 will pay no income tax, and everyone paying the basic rate will receive a £700 per year tax cut. This will be paid for with a mansion tax on homes worth above £2m, and by taxing income and capital gains at the same level. 2) A fair start for all our children - We will cut class sizes and introduce a “pupil premium” which will mean an extra £2.5bn to help improve discipline and provide extra tuition where needed. This will be paid for by stopping tax credits for higher-income earners. 3) A fair and sustainable economy that creates jobs. We will make Britain the world leader in the green economy. We will save £3.5bn on current expenditure and invest in public transport, home insulation and social housing. 4) Fair, transparent and more local politics. We will introduce a fair voting system to end “safe” seats. We will return powers to local communities and councils, and ensure that MPs can be sacked for breaking the rules. We will stop tax avoiders standing for Parliament, sitting in the Lords or donating to political parties. The party has also committed to recruit 3,000 more police officers, scrap university tuition fees within 6 years, increase pay for the armed forces and restore the link between pensions and earnings. We will pay for these things by scrapping ID cards, cutting back on Defence bureaucrats, and abolishing Government Offices in the regions. Sadly, the recession has meant that we have had to move away from some of the things we’d like to do - but Labour have failed in their 13 years, both the economy and politics are broken. The Tories can’t be trusted - they pretend to offer change, but all they do is offer more of the same that has failed us. That’s not change, that’s more of the same. I am proud to be a Lib Dem, we are the only party that can give Britain the fresh start it needs.

Today is the first day of Domestic Abuse Week that seeks to raise awareness of the problems of violence in the home and assist any people that need help.

Domestic violence accounts for 1/4 of all violent crime. I will repeat that again - one quarter of all violence crime.

When discussing law and order the authorities cannot ignore such a big percentage of the overall crime picture: I won’t. When out and about in Woking this week you should see several displays with information and give aways that aim to raise awareness of this critical issue and most importantly reach out to those that need support. If you want more information, please go via the Surrey County Council website on the left of this page - it has tons of useful links on this topic.

I was elected just after Ofsted’s damning report on the inadequacies of Surrey County Council’s children’s services and then the Audit Commission’s judgement that Surrey is the worst county council in the country due to that failure on vulnerable children. So child protection is always going to rate very high on my agenda - but with the 2 year anniversary of Baby Peter’s death and the naming of his killers, it seems to have even more significance than normal. I have no doubt that the photographs of Tracey Connelly, Steven Barker and Jason Owen will become infamous, akin to the mugshots of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. English justice with all its complex oddities has not laid down a prison release date for these people, for example Baby Peter’s mother may be released in 5 years time or 15 years time or more. Coupled with their indeterminate sentencing, is the likely hood of state protection once released. State protection that was clearly not available to those that most deserved it and most needed it. I have two questions: How can a human being do such appalling harm to another human being, in this case to Baby Peter Connelly? And, have Doncaster, Haringey, Milton Keynes and Surrey Councils (the worst protectors of vulnerable children according to Ofsted) really learned the lessons from this tragedy? Haringey Council said they learned from the mistakes of the death of Victoria Climbie, but that was clearly wrong. I hope no one in child protection is wrong this time.

The Surrey Police Authority will have to re-bill residents with a lower council tax and to cut at least 47 staff to pay for it. This follows the Government’s decision to cap the Surrey Police Authority’s budget and then the Police’s failure to get this decision overturned in the High Court. For 2 years running the Surrey Police Authority wanted to put up their share of council tax by more than the Government allows, so the Police budget was capped. Despite the Surrey Police being poorly funded to begin with they are always ranked as one of the top forces and Surrey is one of the safest counties in England. So anything that disturbs this pattern of success is down right disgusting, but it gets worse… The Surrey Police Authority will have to return £1.6 million to local taxpayers at a cost of £1.2 million. It is idiocy on a huge scale to force the police to give back this money at such a cost. When the crime figures were released in November 2008, it showed an 18% increase in crime in Woking. Crime has always gone up in a recessions before, and sadly I think it will go up in this one now. Meaning recession + police cuts = serious problem. A government must have a majority in the House of Commons in order to form a government in the first place, so it is no surprise the cap was approved by Parliament. However, what is surprising is how the vote went – 239 for the cap and 33 against, and which MPs voted which way. Firstly, less than half of MPs voted, which is not much of a turnout is it? Now here’s the big one, none of Surrey’s 11 Conservative MPs voted to protect the Surrey Police from having to make drastic cuts – none even voted. Out of the MPs that voted against the government - 1 was an MP from Northern Ireland, 2 were well know Labour rebels and the rest were Lib Dems. None were Conservative, so much for Her Majesty’s Official Opposition. Whether its Vince Cable on the economy or Nick Clegg on Afghanistan and the Gurkhas, it is the Lib Dems who are opposing the Labour Government.