WE have a short break from Westminster this week for Easter, so I thought I’d would raise a couple of local issues that are making me a bit grumpy at the moment. The first bubbled to the surface when I saw a new report showing that local councils have used CCTV to generate over £300 million in income from traffic offences. That doesn’t feel right to me.

The report is very welcome as it clearly demonstrates what I and others have been saying for some time – that CCTV is being used to raise money on an industrial scale for town halls. It’s something I do not approve of as it breaks a constitutional principle that fines should not be used as a source of revenue. In Reading we know that hundreds of thousands in fines are being handed out to motorists whether for parking in the wrong place or driving in the wrong lane.

Technically, the council has the right to fine motorists as there are signs (however difficult to see) in place. Yet unreasonable parking charges and fines directly affect the living standards of hardworking people in my Reading East constituency. People make a silly mistake and get clobbered, many of those affected who come to my surgeries are elderly or struggling by. Is using CCTV to catch people like this, who park in the wrong place or stray into the wrong lane, the way we want to run our town and the country? It seems rather draconian, dare I say soviet? When you realise these fines are on top of another Reading Borough Council Tax rise, it does show that Reading still has a lot to learn.

The second issue is GP access in Woodley. I held a public meeting last week so that NHS England and the local Clinical Commissioning Groups could hear directly from people. They kept telling me there is no problem, access was fine and planning for the future wasn’t really an issue. I knew it was, but more importantly my constituents knew from their personal experience of trying to get timely appointments. That’s not to criticise the local surgeries, who are doing their best, but to my astonishment NHS England does not monitor access to GPs so has no way of knowing if it is good or bad! That’s not good enough, and nor is a failure to properly plan for the housing numbers that Woodley is taking on over the next 12 years.

I am going to be pretty tough on NHS England and the local CCG concerned until they both get their act together and make big improvements to GP access now and in planning for the future. Sorry to be a bit grumpy about this, but improvements need to happen.