Carmichael responds to some issues: Burma and Health records

Well at last it seems Neil Carmichael is settled in and answering correspondence... here are some of his responses to my recent emails and my comments:

Burma - my first email back on 11th June to Neil was to request he signs EDM112. He replied on 15th July to say he has signed. I welcome this.

Halt NHS record system - see blog here - email sent 18th June. Well I got a week reply today saying patients do have a choice - this is just not true. I will reply asking that Neil considers signing the Early Day Motion (EDM 186) calling on the government to halt all Summary Care Record updates. Here is my reply: "Thanks for replies to letter re Burma - and thanks for support. However I am not happy about your answer re Summary Health Care Records - when the country is being asked to get ready for cutbacks, the last thing I’d hope is for us to be squandering millions of pounds of public money and racking up huge bills for the future. It would appear that the NHS Connecting for Health initially ignored a national agreement with GPs and Trusts to go slow on populating the Summary Care Record system, and organised a nationwide blitz of 30 million mailshots, representing a spend of £7.5m in the last few months alone. The NHS can ill afford to expend further large sums of money on this wasted venture whilst front line staff are still being threatened. Indeed already health records security has been breached including that of the previous prime minister. A BMA survey of 219 doctors showed that 93% are “not confident [that] patient data on the proposed NHS centralised database would be secure”. The survey also showed that 9 out of 10 doctors didn’t feel they could assure their patients that their data would be secure, and that 8 out of 10 wouldn’t want their own medical records uploaded onto the system. I hope you will not support this measure. Indeed I have already opted out of the scheme - it was a complicated process which was not spelt out by the literature I received. This is not a real choice for patients at all. I would ask that you consider signing the EDM on this matter: http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=41109&SESSION=90"

Whiteshill and Ruscombe 20 mph petition - see here - I signed for Neil at Neils' request.

No answers yet on these...

West Papua - see here my letter requesting Neil to join the International Parliamentarians for West Papua. No answer yet.

Threat to buses - see here campaign on my blog on 13th July. No answer yet.

Renewable energy - this was another issue Greens wrote to him about - here is the second letter a couple of weeks ago following up on the first that Neil hadn't responded to - this builds on what had been asked and finished by asking for a response: "I wrote to you some weeks ago regarding the issue of energy security. I noted in particular the reported development of a Wind Farm on your own property in Northumberland and expressed my pleasure that you felt able to make use of renewables as a landowner diversifying, and as a politician supporting what for the Conservative Party is an unloved technology. I was therefore interested to see that you had taken part in the Energy Efficiency debate in the House of Commons on the 30th June, and having read your contribution I am a little surprised that you made no reference to wind and the huge wind resource available within your constituency, but chose to concentrate on Micro-hydro and Nuclear. Although you mentioned decommissioning of Berkeley I noticed you gave no indication of your support or not for EDF’s plans for a massive expansion at Oldbury, do you have a position on EDF’s plans? I was pleased to see in contribution an understanding of the link between a well managed watercourse and flood alleviation but was a little surprised at your concentration on micro-hydro generation as an answer to energy security. As I understand it the likely capacity of micro-hydro will at best provide energy for a very small number of residents or businesses, compared to the potential from wind farms. Accepting that I may be wrong could you let me know the potential from the Stroud District from hydro compared to wind, and given the Water Framework Directive where such schemes could be located? Also given your personal support for wind turbines and your support for a sustainable secure energy supply where you would be able to support Wind Farms within your consistency and what would see a being a meaningful target of renewable generation that should be achieved in the next five years?"