The Cambridge Food Bank Hustings on poverty in Cambridge & the UK

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Co-organised by an alliance of Cambridge-based charities, the candidates were put under pressure on what their manifestos contained in response to the call from the Trussell Trust

The event was held at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Arbury.

To donate to the organising charities which included:

I’m saving the videos to the playlist here, and am breaking up the footage into the individual questions given how the analytics are showing the viewing public are watching hustings footage. The first question the candidates had to deal with was in response to the Trussell Trust’s call here.

Above – from the Cambridge Food Bank / Anti-poverty hustings. 26 June 2024

I’ll leave you to judge the responses of the candidates from this and the additional videos I upload. Feel free to browse through videos of the previous hustings in and around Cambridge on my YT Channel here.

For future general elections, our civic institutions will need to carry out a significant civic education programme to educate the public on the essentials of politics and democracy

This issue came up again with some of the questions from the public (and I am not blaming them for one moment) asking the candidates to do things as MPs that either no government will empower MPs to do, or that empowering them to do such things would cause even more problems that it would solve.

I’ve mentioned repeatedly how Parliament is Sovereign – which means that within the UK it is the supreme law-making institution. That means:

  • it can legislate on whatever it likes (which is *not* the same as ‘legislating without consequences for doing so)
  • it cannot be bound by the decisions of a previous parliament
  • it cannot bind the actions of future parliaments

This in part explains why some in the Labour Party are against Proportional Representation as a system of voting: they like the principle of having unrestricted power to legislate and bring into law a Labour manifesto without having to compromise with other political parties. And historically, with good reason. You only have to look at the collapse of Ramsay MacDonald’s minority Labour Governments in the inter-war era, and of the old Lib-Lab pact of the late 1970s which caused bitter relations with the old Liberal Party. That combined with the breakaway movement of centrist Labour MPs in 1981 that broke away and formed the SDP (later to merge with the Liberal Party to form the Lib-Dems) that kept the Conservatives in power for 18 years at the end of the 20th Century.

“What’s all of that got to do with the collective public knowledge of politics?”

It helps explain why things are as they are: in particular the different working relationships between politicians of opposing political parties as well as within the same ones.

In this case, one of the issues was a major town planning issue – the RailPen developments of The Beehive Centre on Coldham’s Lane, and now the Cambridge Retail Park on Newmarket Road. Quite understandably, the person asking the question had a *huge* series of concerns about the redevelopment. The problem was I wasn’t sure whether any of the answers explained what the role of an MP is in responding to planning applications vs the role of the local council/local planning authority, and of ministers with quasi-judicial powers on planning applications.

“Why would any member of the public – or any candidate know anything about detailed planning policies – let alone be able to explain them at a hustings in 60 seconds?”

That makes my point perfectly: Town planning is one of the most visible examples of how politics affects people’s lives. Deciding the systems, structures, and processes of who decides what should get built and where is inherently political by its nature. It’s about a large group of people deciding what should be done with a fixed asset (land) and a limited amount of resources to improve what is on/in it (money and people).

The concerns from residents – both local and those that drive in from the East Cambridgeshire villages – has been about access to affordable shops, and also the provision of permanent jobs for people who will never have the ability to compete for the highly-specialised jobs provided for by the sci-tech sectors.

The vision for Cambridge Retail Park by Rail Pen

Above – the map. Below: the Key:

  1. A new anchor store to the north of the site.
  2. Multi level parking to enable the removal of surface parking.
  3. Transforming the public realm with a new green corridor.
  4. Refurbishing the existing retail spine for new tenants.
  5. Redeveloping the SCS site to create a new anchor store and additional large format units at the south of the site.
  6. Redeveloping 3-5 Coldham’s Lane for a new retail tenant.
  7. New smaller format retail and [Food + Beverage] units.
  8. New F+B and Leisure spaces to add vibrancy to the site.
  9. Exploring the option of a new hotel, diversifying uses on site.
  10. Forming a new junction with well defined building edges which establishes the principle for a future street northwards.
  11. Area of surface car parking must remain in accordance with binding lease agreements.

The redevelopment of this site is both inherently political and also one that will affect levels of poverty and multiple deprivation in and around our city.

This is one reason why I have called for a new railway station/light rail stop to be built to serve the RailPEN developments – see my blogpost from July 2023

Above – Coldham’s Lane Bridges looking southwards

A station built over and around the existing bridges (I remember having to cycle over it on work experience in the mid-1990s before the foot/cyclebridge was built next to it!) in my view has to be built to serve the revamped Beehive Sci-Tech development, the Grafton Centre redevelopment (where I got told to stop recording a vlogpost earlier!), the revamped retail park, and residents in Romsey. It’s also a convenient walk for travelling football fans getting to the Abbey Stadium.

The Political Question is whether local government has the means (legal powers, financial resources) and the desire (political will from politicians) to persuade if not compel the landowners and also Network Rail to build the necessary infrastructure to make that happen.

“When and where are the best times/places to have those conversations?”

Exactly. Because the public is quite rightly encouraged to go to hustings and ‘have their say’. And to be told ‘It’s too complicated’ is hardly the sort of response that will inspire people to get involved in politics anyway. It will either make them angry or make them walk away and shut off from it.

Hence my take that citizenship & civic education for both children and adults is part of the solution – ensuring that more people can ask more informed and targeted questions, and that this results in both a different/better way of making decisions where we live, and the creation of new, better civic forums where complex problems can be addressed in a way that brings communities along rather than having top-down solutions imposed on them. Which reminds me – I still don’t know what the other parties have formally proposed as their alternatives to Gove’s ‘in suspended animation’ Case for Cambridge.

Food for thought?

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:

Below: If you feel you do not know enough about politics and democracy in the UK, get hold of a new/second hand copy of any GCSE Citizenship textbook – either the full version or the revision guide (The latter sticks to the summary levels only)