England must not be ignored

ED MILIBAND’S unease and wobbliness was plain to see when he was repeatedly asked yesterday whether he supported English votes for English laws in the wake of the decision to devolve even more powers to the Scottish Parliament.

He simply played for time by proposing yet another commission before saying, categorically, that he would not waiver from his decision – along with David Cameron and Nick Clegg – to maintain the discredited Barnett Formula, which continues to skew public funding in favour of the Scots, and at the expense of the English.

If this is evidence of the Doncaster North MP listening and learning to the electorate – Paddy Ashdown warned of “a people’s revolt” unless trust is restored to politics – it does not bode well at all for the future.

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Even Lord Barnett, the veteran Labour peer who devised the funding formula in the late 1970s, says his policy should be scrapped and replaced with a new policy that distributes “government spending in a way that the most money goes to areas that need it most”.

How ironic that Mr Miliband – who was so upstaged on the campaign trail by his predecessor Gordon Brown and the respected Jim Murphy – continues to endorse such an unfair mechanism when fairness and equality go to the core of the Labour Party and the principles that will underpin its manifesto for the 2015 election. He does so because Labour simply will be unable to form next government without a solid contingent of MPs from north of the border who will then be expected to pass the party’s policies into law – even those that only pertain to England.

Of course, the Prime Minister wrong-footed his opponents by linking Scottish devolution to the rights of English MPs, but this does not justify Mr Miliband’s lame responses. They smacked of weak leadership, a continuing failure to understand the needs of the North (even more embarrassing for a South Yorkshire politician) and that the McKay Commission demonstrated last year how the rights of English MPs can be addressed without further prevarication. To paraphrase the Labour leader’s favourite soundbite, Britain deserves better.

Labour and Shaun Wright’s role

HOW DISINGENUOUS can you get? With a predictably-timed piece of opportunism, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says Labour will abolish crime commissioners after the Shaun Wright resignation fiasco in South Yorkshire.

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The Pontefract and Castleford MP was quick to blame the Home Secretary for the lack of confidence in crime tsars. “This was Theresa May’s flagship reform and it just hasn’t worked,” said Ms Cooper before overlooking those instances where commissioners have held police chiefs to account.

Yet Ms Cooper did not answer any questions about her party’s culpability in Rotherham – and how it took three weeks for Mr Wright, the town’s former head of children’s services, to resign over the Jay report into the sex grooming scandal. This still does not explain why Labour saw fit to select Mr Wright in the first place in 2012 when the level of abuse was already widely known – and why the party did not have the courage to sack the commissioner instantaneously when Alex Jay’s report was published rather than allowing him to meekly surrender his Labour membership.

Yes, it was remiss of Mrs May not to enshrine the right to sack scandal-hit commissioners into law, but Labour’s own failures must not be covered up and the party has a duty to offer a full explanation to South Yorkshire voters ahead of next month’s by-election.

Time to see sense on eye checks

OF the five human senses, sight is the most important. Without clear vision, it is almost impossible to function effectively – despite the inspirational example of Sheffield’s David Blunkett, who did not allow his blindness to be the barrier to a distinguished political career.

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Yet, despite preventative healthcare going to the heart of NHS people, one in 10 people are endangering their sight because they do not undertake regular check because of ignorance – the nationwide increase in eye infections is now being linked to DIY contact lenses purchased on the internet – or financial concerns.

With new glasses, or lenses, costing several hundred pounds, it is surely in the interests of the College of Optometrists to look at the issue of cost so there is no excuse for people not going to the optician for regular checks. After all, this is, potentially, a life a death issue – one consequence of inaction is drivers getting behind the wheel of a car when it is not safe for them to do so.