Roger Godsiff says: "Don’t risk your life by taking a barbecue into your tent”

 "Don’t risk your life by taking a barbecue into your tent” is the message from the charity Carbon Monoxide Awareness

The charity Carbon Monoxide Awareness is to launch a "national" campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning from barbecues. The campaign is being launched to help raise awareness about the dangers of carbon monoxide.

The campaign in memory of 14 year old Wilmslow schoolgirl Hannah Thomas-Jones and others who lost their lives to carbon monoxide from barbecues or camping lamps will be launched in the House of Commons on Tuesday 10 July.

The launch event will be hosted on behalf of the charity by Weaver Vale MP Graham Evans. The campaign is a joint venture between Carbon Monoxide Awareness (charity) and Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service. It is supported by CFOA and a number of major retailers including Asda, Tesco, Morrison’s, Homebase, B & Q and Dunelm Mill who have pledged to put up point-of-sale notices in their stores for barbecue equipment.

Lynn Griffiths, President of Carbon Monoxide Awareness, said: “Already this year there have been a number of camping fatalities and serious injuries resulting from people taking barbecue equipment inside their tents”. These products are designed solely for outdoor use and should not be used in enclosed spaces such as tents, caravans, campervans or home conservatories. Modern tents are designed as an integral structure with built-in groundsheets and carbon monoxide gases can rise to fatal levels in a matter of minutes if portable or disposable barbecues are used inside for heating purposes.

Carbon monoxide (CO) is difficult to detect because it is colourless and has no taste or smell. People often don’t realise that they are being overcome by fumes until it is too late. “We shall be working with Fire and Rescue services across the UK to get educational and awareness packs to the UK holiday industry for the benefit of holiday-makers. We shall also be targeting campsite owners and their staff with information on how to recognise the presence of carbon monoxide in enclosed tented areas caravans. We’ve seen too much tragic loss of life and we want to avoid it in future. 

Lynn went on to say “I would like every MP to warn their constituents about the possible dangers of carbon monoxide in the home and when going away on holiday. We don’t want to see another death or injury from a barbecue during a music festival, Olympics or summer holidays. I am also campaigning to have carbon monoxide advice prominently displayed on the packaging of barbecue’s and tents and our politicians can be very influential in making this happen.”

Exposure to the gas reduces the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen, thereby causing the vital organs to fail. Early symptoms are similar to flu or food poisoning, but these worsen as more of the gas is breathed in and CO concentrations in the blood increase. Anyone who suspects that they may be suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning should turn off all appliances, go outside and seek help from a qualified healthcare professional.

Chester Bidmead, the managing director of Hentland Group stated, this launch is critical to ensuring that the awareness of carbon monoxide poisoning is broadcasted into everyone’s lives. The importance of this campaign cannot be over emphasised and we are proud to be supporting this charity.

For more information visit www.covictim.org

The Carbon Monoxide Awareness campaign is in memory of 14 year old Wilmslow schoolgirl Hannah Thomas-Jones and others who lost their lives to carbon monoxide from barbecues or camping lamps.

Godsiff on Banking

LIBOR (FSA Investigation) Debate

2 July 2012 : Column 627

Mr Roger Godsiff (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab): After the nationwide disturbances last year, a student was given a six-month sentence for stealing a pack of water bottles. What punishment does the Chancellor believe would be appropriate for bankers who have stolen millions of pounds from investors through rigging interest rates?

Mr Osborne: I completely understand and sympathise with the sentiment that the hon. Gentleman is expressing: people suffer criminal penalties for offences involving much, much smaller sums of money—a fraction of the sums that we are talking about. The Serious Fraud Office, which is independent of the Government, is looking at the matter. Let us wait to hear what it has to say. It is looking at what laws are available to let it do that. I am sure that he would not want the Government of the day to undertake the criminal prosecutions themselves.

Professional Standards in the Banking Industry Debate

5 July 2012

Mr Roger Godsiff (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab): I strongly support the proposal for a judicial inquiry. I am sure that under the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) a parliamentary inquiry will do its best, but I think that for the reasons that have been advanced today there is a need for a judicial inquiry, because as the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) have said, this issue goes way beyond fiddling the LIBOR rate. This is a much bigger issue, and it is the bigger issue that needs to be addressed.

Whether the inquiry is parliamentary or judicial, I have concerns about the continual emphasis on the need to do something about the culture and standards of banking, because it implies that if we change the people at the top of banking we will change the behaviour. Would that were the case. I do not believe that it is. There are of course many people who work in banks who do an excellent job. They work very hard, they do not get paid a great deal of money or share in massive bonuses, and they are as disgusted as we are by what has gone on, but even if the most pious, puritanical person is put in charge of a den of inequity, they will eventually be corrupted.

5 July 2012 : Column 1147

That is what happens when someone is put on a trading floor, and I speak as somebody who worked in a bank. Many years ago I worked for Coutts, when it did what traditional retail banks did—what the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) described, and what the general public want. But if somebody is put on a trading floor and deals in obscure derivatives and other financial products, they will be either corrupted by what goes on, crushed by their peers or, if he or she is very brave, turned into a whistleblower.

Of course, there is a culture in banking that needs to be looked at—the culture of remuneration and bonuses. However, it is not just banking that has a culture whereby somebody who is paid to do a job, such as a nurse, teacher or bank clerk, and then expects to get a massive great bonus for doing it, irrespective of whether they do it well or badly. This is far removed from the lives of the general public because of the amounts of money being talked about. Bob Diamond has earned £100 million, and if he walks away the question is whether he will get £20 million. Twenty million pounds is way beyond what the vast majority of our constituents can expect to earn in a lifetime, even if we add in their pension pots, so we are talking about a surreal world as far as the wider public are concerned.

To be fair to the Business Secretary, he has said that the problem can be addressed through shareholder power. That is naïve, however, because the biggest shareholders of public companies are the institutions—and many of the people in those institutions sit on other boards, so it all becomes an incestuous circle. Different remuneration committees can consist of the same people. It all comes down to, “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.”
If the Government were serious about making radical changes to the culture that I have just referred to, they could do worse than limit the number of directorships of publicly quoted companies that any one person can have. They could also change the rules so that the remuneration committees of all publicly quoted companies had a majority of small shareholders. That would really send shock waves across the institutions, but not the shareholders, who would welcome the opportunity.
Time is running out. We need to change not just the culture but the structure of banking. In 1986, the wild west came back—all the firewalls and protections put in place following the previous financial crisis in 1929 were swept away. We are all responsible in some part for that; we created the masters of the universe, who have not done us any favours. We have to go back to basics and reconstruct a banking system that is fit for purpose, serves the people and is not self-serving for a small minority.

Cooperative Funeral Care Early Day Motion

 

Roger Godsiff has tabled the following Early Day Motion

Early day motion 256

CO-OPERATIVE FUNERAL CARE

Main content

• Session: 2012-13
• Date tabled: 25.06.2012
• Primary sponsor: Godsiff, Roger
• Sponsors:
  • Campbell, Ronnie
  • Sharma, Virendra

Total number of signatures: 3

Campbell, Ronnie	Godsiff, Roger	Sharma, Virendra

That this House is shocked and disgusted by the revelations made on the Channel Four Dispatches programme on 25 June 2012 that the Co-operative Funeralcare organisation uses warehouses on industrial estates to store coffins with bodies in them rather than Chapels of Rest; notes that Co-operative Funeralcare is the largest funeral care provider in the UK with a reputation for trust, sensitivity and good customer service; is appalled that this reputation has been compromised by management directives to mislead grieving families into purchasing expensive funerals and charging customers an array of charges for services which they did not want; believes that a mutual organisation can, and should, have higher ethical standards than a purely profit-orientated company; and calls for those responsible for these actions within the organisation to be removed from their positions.

Roger Godsiff demands urgent investigation into Olympic security company

Birmingham MP, Roger Godsiff, has written to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (DWP), Iain Duncan Smith MP, asking him to investigate, as a matter of urgency, the treatment received by a group of long-term unemployed jobseekers and apprentices who were bussed into London to work as unpaid stewards during the diamond jubilee celebrations and told to sleep under London Bridge before working on the river pageant.

Up to 30 jobseekers and another 50 people on apprentice wages were taken to London by coach from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth as part of the government’s Work Programme.

Arrangements for the day were made by the security firm Close Protection UK, which won a stewarding contract for the jubilee events and also has won a contract to provide staff for the Olympics.  A spokesman said the unpaid work was a trial for paid roles at the Olympics and the company admitted today that it had made ‘logistical errors’ in leaving the group of people, both men and women, to fend for themselves at 3am on a wet, cold, Jubilee Sunday in London.

It appears that the jobseekers had to camp under London Bridge the night before the pageant, change into security gear in public, had no access to toilets for 24 hours, and were taken to a swampy campsite outside London after working a 14-hour shift in the pouring rain on the banks of the Thames on Sunday.

Roger Godsiff said: “Clearly the treatment that these jobseekers received is unacceptable but is it also deeply worrying that this same company is providing staff for the Olympics who might be filling security roles“.

He went on to say: “There is also a suggestion that companies such as this might be profiteering from the continued confusion surrounding whether or not unemployed people should do ‘work for no pay’ as part of their assessment or risk loosing benefits.

I have asked Iain Duncan Smith MP if his department has put in place any monitoring mechanisms to ensure that the young unemployed are not open to the risk of exploitation in this way.  Have Job Centres been given clear guidelines to operate by the DWP or are they still able to hint that not taking any work offered, voluntary or otherwise, will have a detrimental impact on their claim?”.

Close Protection UK said it had spent considerable resources on training and equipment that stewards could keep and that the experience was voluntary and did not affect jobseekers keeping their benefits.

Mr Godsiff also took the opportunity to ask the Secretary of State for a progress report on the case of Cait Reilly, who despite DWP rules, was told by her local Job Centre in King's Heath, Birmingham that she would lose her benefits if she did not take a Poundland placement.

Roger Votes for Credit Caps on Pay Day Loans

Roger Godsiff MP vows to continue to support credit caps as Government scuppers opportunity to protect public from legal loan sharks.

The MP for Birmingham Hall Green today expressed his disappointment as yet again the Government rejected Labour attempts to protect consumers from the problems caused by payday lending.

In Westminster on Tuesday 22 May 2012, Roger Godsiff MP voted to support a cross party amendment to the Financial Services Bill which would have allowed the regulator to cap the cost of credit if a financial product was judged to cause ‘consumer detriment’. Despite the support of several Conservative MPs, the Government whipped its MPs to reject the amendment.

The Government’s rejection of this reform came on the same day as new research was published which showed that 98% of MPs and 93% of the public believe there is a problem with payday lending. 66% of MPs and 65% of the public also support a cap on the total cost of credit.

Roger Godsiff said:

‘Residents of Birmingham are suffering in our current economic climate as the cost of living rises, wage freezes and unemployment hit their household incomes. I know from talking to them how they are turning to credit from these companies to make ends meet. They lend money at extortionate rates of interest that can cause a cycle of debt for many, with one in three payday loans being taken out to pay off other payday loans. This amendment to the Financial Services Bill would have sent a message to the industry that their worst excesses would no longer be tolerated.

Despite saying they support action, too many Government MPs didn’t have the guts to stand up for the people they represent. By voting against this proposal, this Government has shown just how out of touch it is with the rest of the country. The research is clear – across Britain everyone else overwhelmingly backs our proposals to take action to tackle the debts that payday lending can cause and to give UK consumers the same protection others round the world enjoy. We will now take the fight for this proposal to the House of Lords as this isn’t over – residents in Birmingham should know that whilst the Government may sit on its hands, we will continue to campaign for an end to legal loan sharking in Britain.’

1. ROGER GODSIFF MP voted in favour of Amendment 40 to the Financial Services Bill. The outcome of this vote was 225 to 266 with over twenty Government MPs choosing to abstain on the matter or vote for it.

2. Amendment 40 stated: ‘The FCA [Financial Conduct Authority – the new regulator] may make rules or apply a sanction to authorised persons who offer credit on terms that the FCA judge to cause consumer detriment. This may include rules that determine a minimum total cost for consumers of a product and determine the minimum duration of a supply of a product or service to an individual

Roger opposes 3p increase in Fuel Duty

I am opposed to the increase Fuel Duty on petrol and diesel from the 1st August which will push up the price of petrol and diesel by approximately 16p a gallon.

I have signed the Amendment to the Finance Act which would stop this rise going ahead because I believe, particularly at this moment in time, the placing yet another burden on hard-pressed families and small businesses cannot be justified.

The Coalition Government is seeking to raise extra revenue to reduce the financial deficit and an increase in Fuel Duty is going to impact severely on many businesses and will lead to less economic activity while also taking more money out of the pockets of consumers.  This will depress even more the desperate need for growth in the economy and will merely increase Government borrowing because there will be more people out of work and therefore less tax being paid while unemployment expenditure will increase.

Roger Godsiff welcomes £5000 Crimestoppers reward for Emma Winnall attack

Roger has welcomed the £5,000 reward offered by the crime fighting charity Crimestoppers for information regarding the attack on the 94 year old, Emma Winnall who lives in Pensby Close, Moseley. 

Roger said: “The attack on this defenceless elderly lady while she was asleep in her home was absolutely outrageous and the individual, or individuals, involved must be tracked down and brought before the Courts.

The senseless attack was without any purpose whatsoever because nothing appears to have been stolen and in view of the fact that there appears to have been no forced entry into the property it would appear that the intruder may have had access to the property before.

The ferocity of the attack and the senseless nature of it is beyond belief and could only have been carried out by an individual, or individuals, who cannot be described as normal human beings.

I would urge anybody who has suspicions about who could have carried out the attack to share their information with the local Police or Crimestoppers as soon as possible.”