The Coalition Government has announced £1.8 billion cuts to housing benefit, and I'll be making it a front line campaign priority in the new Parliamentary term.
In my constituent advice sessions, housing problems whether access to or fear of losing benefit, or simply joining the queue for scarce affordable accommodation, have produced the most constituent case work since my election in May.
There is something fundamentally unjust about a council using tax payers' money to fund speculative ventures in the private sector. Leave that to independent businesses who can take the financial risk with their own money.
But no one has really asked GPs if they are able to do it and if they want to do it.
Why would they want to practise healthcare management with all its budgets and bureaucracy when they opted for a professional vocation caring for individual patients - providing medical care?
The recent news of at least 150 job losses at Lloyds Group in the city - unions say far more - shows how vulnerable our local economy is to the on-going economic crisis.
