Live webchat with Ed Miliband, Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition, Thursday 1st Dec at 1.45pm

[KatieMumsnet]

We're very pleased to announce that Labour leader, Ed Miliband will be joining us for a webchat this Thursday between 1.45pm and 2.45pm.

Ed is MP for Doncaster, former Minister for Energy and Climate change and won the Labour leadership in the autumn of 2010. He's keen to hear your views and answer any of your questions.

Do join us for the webchat. As ever, if you can't make it, please post up your advance questions here.

Thanks,

MNHQ

I am a Carer for two autistic children who desperately wants to get back to work next summer.

All I can see is a pile of schemes to help every other type of unemployed group, and cuts to the services we rely on.

It feels as if we are being attacked from all angles: for needing help and for wanting to change things ourselves.

After 12 years of coping I was diagnosed with stress on Tuesday, and a lot of that is the over whelming feeling that nobody is fighting for people like us: plenty of grandstanding on bankers and middle incomes but nothing relevant to helping us. ATOS continues to cause distress for people, Carer's and other national charities warn of disabled people being hit under the new criteria and not a peep from anyone.

As a Labour member who desperately wants to believe that someone is fighting our cause, please talk me into not cancelling my membership (yes, I did vote for you). I have gone from being asked by a leading university to join them to study Social Policy and offered an MRes place by another to focus on child poverty, to thinking politics is completely irrelevant to us in any real terms and all we can do is hunker down and pray we can still eat and pay the rent. That improving our situation is a chance that passed us by simply because my specialism is a charity / public sector one (autism).

whats fave biscuit?

why cant you outline a credible economic policy and global crisis aside admit labour did overspend and keep nothing aside for rainy day.All the ideas seem to involve spending and borrowing more.

If you were honest and admitted where labour did go wrong maybe i give you a fresh look.

In the uk people with alpha1 antitrypsin deficiency are being denied augmentation therapy which slows the lung decline in this terminal genetic medical condition for which there is no cure. The alpha1 produced by the liver is misfolded and retained causing fibrosis and cirrhosis. The lungs are not protected as there is hardly any alpha1 in the blood to prevent emphysema. Augmentation therapy, which replaces the alpha1 to a level of protection in the blood, has been available in america for over 20yrs and most european countries, but is denied by the nhs. My question is what can you do to help people with alpha1 antitrypsin deficiency get augmentation therapy in the uk? Thank you

Hello Mr Milliband,

I would like to ask a question about local government. The council area I live in appears to have been Conservative led since God was a boy, which may in part be because at local election time, candidates from feasible opposition parties are few and far between.

In some cases, councillors are elected unopposed because they are the only candidate, or voters have as few as two choices of candidate.

I know that it can be difficult to encourage people to take on what is a time-consuming (if done properly) and not always well-paid role, but what are you and the party doing to encourage people to stand as councillors?

Hello Ed

With your ex-DECC hat on: what do you think about the upcoming UN talks on climate change? Is the negotiating situation as hopeless as everyone says (and if so, who do you think should blink first?) Do you wish you could go or are you rather glad to be out of it?

Would you be in favour of making party manifestos more legally binding? Many voters read them and voted accordingly only for it all to be thrown in the air with the coalition, leaving a rather bitter taste in many people's mouths and many people feeling disillusioned as to the whole election process.

galettes, my mum has alpha1...you've opened my eyes to something today. She had to have a double lung transplant almost 3 years ago due to the state of her poor lungs. I never even knew of this alternative. I, therefore roundly second your question to Mr Miliband.

As for my own question, Mr M: I work for the prison service and would like to know whether you agree with the current method of dealing with inmates and overcrowding at the moment. Namely, shutting prisons or privatising them. Giving that private prisons perform poorer than state run prisons and the current contract for prison transport is a joke (we have been advised by them that they do not care for the constant issues we have with them not picking up prisoners on time, if at all, nor checking the correct documentation so the liklihood of the wrong prisoners or wrong catergory prisoners being delivered to the wrong prison is very worryingly high at present) how can this combat the issues we are facing with crime in this country? How is this tackling the over-population of the prisons?

Littlewhitewolf so sorry to hear that your mum has alpha1 antitrypsin deficiency and I hope she is breathing well with her lung transplant with so many thanks to the donor. Augmentation therapy slows the progress of emphysema - which is a terrible thing to have. Our group alpha1 advocay and action (www.facebook.com/#!/groups/276897805671222/ )is campigning to get this replacement therapy available in the UK. At the moment the powers that be say it's available by the named patient system but the NICE "do not do recommendation" means that no lung alpha's get the treatment that would help them lead active lives. The doctors here are doing placebo clinical studies with augmentation therapy and this is only possible as augmentation therapy isn't licensed. If the treatment was given to people with alpha1 in the UK then the placebo trials would stop and imho the information put out by the alpha1 research centre shows that it's big business. The winners are the doctors doing the research and the drugcompanies and the losers are uk alpha1 people who are denied proper treatment. It's just so awful that being disabled because of alpha1 is allowed to happen in the uk.

(apology for the spelling!)

We have had a couple of questions come in via our Facebook page

Erika-Maye Davies says Can we have a private rendition of "Endless Love", please, Ed? They were discuss your liking for it on HIGNFY.

Sarah Brown says Could you ask - Work by the Fawcett Society and other womens organizations has shown how the cuts have disproportionately affected women. If back in power how does he propose to tackle this problem? Many thanks!

littlewhitewolves here's the link & hope it works this time :) www.facebook.com/Supernova1963/posts/118838924889368#!/groups/276897805671222/

Thank you galette, I will follow that link. She is doing much better, but she had to spend 6 months in hospital and nearly died more than once from complications. She is still registered as disabled though. You're right that if there is preventative treatment available, why is it not being offered?

Hello Mr Miliband.
Bankers Bonus Tax.
What would be the tenth spending commitment for this and how much would it be for?

Hi Ed,
Can you explain how increasing the countries debt will actually decrease the countries debt? Not sure I can quite grasp that one.

Happy to hear that she is much better. Many best wishes to you and yours. I hope that Ed Miliband will have some answers and can help to get this alpha1 replacement treatment in the UK.

Where can I find a job as a dinner lady, a cleaner or a nurse that pays £572,000 pa? (or the cost of a weeks skiing per week)

Dear Mr Miliband,

I'd like to ask as your view on the Maternity Allowance for self-employed/business owners mothers. It seems very unfair that someone that is employed by a company is allowed to start their own company while on Maternity Leave but a self-employed person is not allowed to keep running their business, that is not even allowed to email, answer a phone call while on Maternity Allowance - apart from 10 days (however even if you only work 30 minutes in a day it is considered a full day)

I do understand that Maternity Allowance is designed so that you can spend time with your baby, but I fail to see how using a few hours a week to maintain your business afloat while on Maternity Leave is of any problem. A bigger problem is to have to shut down your business completely to go on Maternity Leave or have a month off only and have to go straight back to work full-time on your business.

The rules for Maternity Allowance for self-employed/business owners mothers are completely unfair and deserve to be looked at and changed. I would very much appreciate to hear your views on this and how this can be improved.

Many thanks.

What do you think about the fact that some of the poorest families in Britain are going to be faced with stark choices next year when the Tax Credits cuts start to bite? I personally will have to make a choice between only putting half a week's electric on the meter, or not buying ANY food for my family for one day a week - that is the difference that uprating TC's at LESS than the CPI will make. There IS no wriggle room in my budget, and nowhere else to cut costs except on essential utilities or food.

Do you plan to try to get the current Government to uprate Tax Credits in line with the CPI as promised or not?

Hi Ed

My question would be the following:

Given that Labour accept (along with all mainstream parties) that cuts to our expenditure are necessary, it seems strange to me that your party seem to oppose every single proposed cut the coalition have made. Can you name a single proposed cut you agree with or if not, name one which you would make if you were PM?

Hi Ed, please tell us that something is going to be done to support the children with parents who need to move because of the housing benefit cuts.

Children in nursery/school will need to be pulled out, losing friends parents lose local support systems - Surely this is desperately wrong and breeding an unworthy impoverished state of mind to single parents and the children in these unforeseen circumstances.

Please answer, this is all I think about.

I have taken 6 years out of work to bring up my family. I am now trying to get back into work, but there is no support to help me. I'm not classed as unemployed, so I'm unable to get any help from places such as the job centre. I have good qualifications and a solid work background, I have used the time to gain transferable skills and build on different experiences through voluntary work. There are many women like me who are faced with the same circumstances. What would your party do to help me and those in similar circumstances?

Mr Miliband

Surely it is time to admit that Nu Labour is not working so when will the party be returning to its roots and actually supporting those who make up the Labour voting demographic?

NorfolkNChance

Hello Mr Milliband.

Could you tell me why successive (not just labour) governments are so against sahp's, the vast majority of whom are women???? And why the cuts are disproportionately affecting this section of society???

As we all know, this financial crisis and the Tories' alarming programme is sacrificing not only jobs, but families, homes, mental wellbeing, our necessary infrastructures... The Conservatives readily sweep this under the carpet, variously blaming others for their mess (Labour, the world...) and demonising the very people hit hardest.

I feel that Labour needs to do even more, at every opportunity, to really give voice to the human consequences. Your thoughts?

Ed,

As the parent of a disabled child, I worry about the cuts to services, DLA reforms and lack of funding. Could you explain how you would remedy these problems faced by parents all over the country whos children have additional needs.