Nick Harvey MP

This article appeared on Liberal Democrat Voice - http://www.libdemvoice.org/nick-harvey-mp-writes-updating-you-on-trident-28643.html

Today's announcement that design contracts for the Trident successor submarines have been signed is being portrayed as the Coalition Government moving a step closer to a full Trident replacement.

North Devon MP, Nick Harvey went "back to the floor" at Barnstaple's William C Hockin Transport as part of a scheme run by the Forum of Private Business for their Get Britain Trading campaign.

The scheme, where MPs meet with businesses in their community to learn more about the issues that they face is growing in success with more businesses and constituency MPs signing up to take part.

New plans to reform park home and caravan site licensing rules have been welcomed by North Devon MP, Nick Harvey.

Mr Harvey is one of many MPs who campaigned for a tightening of loopholes in the 1983 Mobile Homes Act which allow unscrupulous park owners to interfere in the selling of homes and then buy them at vastly reduced prices.

One of the number of under-reported issues that gets raised at my surgery and in correspondence with constituents is the problems that families with children who have special educational needs (SEN) face.

Unfortunately, under the current system, the bureaucracy involved in getting the help needed means parents are passed from pillar to post between different authorities and agencies and the welfare of the child often comes second. New rules should stop this from happening.

North Devon MP Nick Harvey has welcomed the announcement that Devon will get extra money in its school budget this year to relieve the pressure on school places.

The additional £2,374,027 is part of a larger amount of capital spending already ear-marked in England this year, with investment being made in extra classrooms and school buildings. This comes on top of the £800m to address the shortage in pupil places already announced for 2012-13.

The thorny subject of party political fundraising has been thrust to front and centre of politics over the past couple of weeks with evidence coming to light that the Conservatives' (now former) Treasurer, Peter Cruddas, appeared to be offering access to the Prime Minister, suggesting that previous donors had enjoyed exclusive access to exclusive or glitzy functions and a role in policy making.

As part of the Budget, the Chancellor has announced that from next year, the Income Tax threshold will be raised further, ensuring that no one pays any income tax on the first £9,205 they earn.

In North Devon that means 4,100 people will be lifted out of paying Income Tax all together and a further 31,200 will receive a £220 tax cut. This is on top of tax cuts of £200 last year and a further £130 next month.

Over 20 million working people will be better off next year after Liberal Democrats in the Coalition Government delivered the biggest ever increase in the income tax personal allowance in the Budget.

The massive £3.5bn tax cut for working people delivers:

• The biggest ever single uplift in the tax threshold
• A personal allowance of £9,205 in April 2013
• 21 million working people getting an extra £220 tax cut
• Brings the total tax cut for basic rate tax payers to £550
• Brings the total number of people lifted out of tax to 2 million.

Nick Harvey MP has written to the chairmen of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and its Administrators Grant Thornton urging them to look sympathetically at the community bid to buy the buildings of the former St Michael's School at Tawstock, near Barnstaple.

The school went into administration and closed for business in a shock move over the Christmas holidays, triggered by RBS as its bankers. Grant Thornton were appointed as Administrators.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg used his speech to the Party's Spring conference in NewcastleGateshead to call for the forthcoming budget to be a "budget for fairness" and pledged that it would help working familes.

The Deputy Prime Minister pledged that by 2015 Britain would have seen an end to control orders, the first gay marriages and the first elections to the House of Lords.