Ben’s Record as Conservative Parliamentary Candidate

Ben has been the Conservative candidate for Ipswich since August 2007 and already he has made his presence felt.

From winning a reprieve for Fore Street Post Office to fighting against cuts to Ipswich Hospital, Ben has shown what he could achieve as the Town’s MP.

 

Post Offices

When the government revealed that it wanted to close four post offices in Ipswich, Ben fought back. He went to Downing Street with a thousand signatures on his petition, and continued the high-level lobbying of Royal Mail. He explained to managers that the closure of Fore Street was the worst decision of all, because there would soon be thousands of students at the new university without a post office.

Ben’s arguments won through – so although the government continued with the closure programme, Royal Mail gave Fore Street a reprieve.

 

Ipswich Hospital

Ben’s biggest campaign has been to save Ipswich Hospital as a serious general hospital.

In spring 2007 the government announced that they wanted to close the head and neck cancer unit at Ipswich Hospital and take away the specialised plastic surgeons who deal with serious injuries. The doctors came to Ben for help, as the local MP supported the plan. Ben swung into action – he organised a massive petition that gained more than two thousand signatures and forced the government bureaucrats to come clean on their plans.

After lodging a series of Freedom of Information requests, Ben found out that the “consultation” was in fact a sham and that the decision had already been taken. Although the government went ahead with its cuts, Ben’s high-profile campaign, which won the praise of the Evening Star, has forced the bureaucrats to be more cautious in their plans to cut yet more services.

Ben knows that if elected, this will be the biggest fight of them all – so the campaign goes on.

 

Government Waste

Ben believes that government should spend money carefully. That’s why he asked Suffolk Primary Care Trust – the government body that runs healthcare in Ipswich – how much it was spending on management consultants. Although the Trust tried hard not to reveal what they had spent, Ben dragged the figures out of them. The results were shocking: nearly a million pounds in less than a year, and the costs still rising. Ben’s tenacity forced the Trust directors onto the radio to explain their actions – and promise that they will keep spending down.

 

Speeding Traffic

At the end of 2008 Ben spent a morning talking to the residents of Maryon Road in Gainsborough, knocking on doors and discussing concerns. Almost everyone he met said they were fed up with cars using the road as a rat-run, speeding up and down with no regard to local people. Road noise had increased, it was sometimes difficult and dangerous for people to get out of their drives, and many felt pedestrians were put at risk.

So, Ben immediately lobbied the Borough Council, putting forward the residents’ concerns. Not long after the Borough responded, bringing forward a traffic calming scheme to help restore some peace to Maryon Road.

 

Flooding

Ipswich is extremely vulnerable to flooding, so the flood defences need to me maintained. If these are broken, a storm surge would take out the Town's electricity and sewerage systems, and bring water half way up to Princes Street. So the Environment Agency’s plans to spend £50 million repairing the Town’s flood defences are vital to the growth of Ipswich and further development of the Waterfront.

When the government said that it would not pledge the funding, Ben invited the Shadow Environment Minister to Ipswich to apply political pressure. At the same time, he lobbied the Environment Agency to push the scheme up its 'to-do' list. The government has since seen sense and the first phase of the flooding scheme has been given the funding it requires; Ben will continue to push for the rest of the money to come, so all of Ipswich can be protected.

 

Garden Grabbing

The government has demanded that Ipswich builds more than 15,000 new homes in the Town - equivalent to adding a town the size of Bury St Edmunds. But Ipswich has very tight boundaries, laid out in the nineteenth century, with few open spaces available for development. As the government threatened the Town with a cut in its grant unless it found development space, Borough planners were forced to identify people's gardens for development. Worried residents came to Ben, asking for help - as the local MP supported the government’s garden-grab.

Ben visited residents and took with him the Shadow Housing Minister, Grant Shapps. He promised residents that a Conservative government would immediately stop imposing central housing targets on councils, and their gardens would be safe from development.