Yardley: The battle of ASBOs and subways
It might have been Red Nose Day when politics.co.uk visited Birmingham Yardley, but there was little sign of levity in what will be a key general election battle for all parties.
The centre of Birmingham has undergone something of a cultural and architectural renaissance over the past 15 years, but this seems to have passed Yardley by. Its streets and shops are resolutely urban and low price – with a full breakfast costing less than a cup of coffee in London.
Although not impoverished, the seat is a far cry from neighbouring affluent Solihull and has suffered through the decline of heavy industry in the Midlands. A third of the workforce are skilled manual workers, with 20 per cent of the population living in council accommodation and 26 per cent of households lacking central heating – the 11th highest in England and Wales.
The urban environment is shaping up to be the key issue of the campaign, with the focus on anti-social behaviour and the future of the graffiti-encrusted subways under the main Coventry Road, which offer the only means to cross the busy dual-carriage way that bisects the constituency.
As the UK’s second city, Birmingham’s politics always have national ramifications, but this year the political campaigning is under sharper focus that usual. Just across the city an electoral court is hearing serious allegations that some Labour members were involved in postal vote fraud and rigging in the 2004 council elections. All have denied the charges. Although Yardley was not cited in the allegations, it is clearly a major issue for Birmingham politics.
What was already going to be a tense battle has been made even closer by Arts Minister and former Education Secretary Estelle Morris’s decision not to seek re-election. Ms Morris has held the seat since 1992 after a knife-edge 162 vote win over the Conservatives and is well liked throughout the constituency.
In the intervening years the Tories have fallen away from being the main opposition and the Liberal Democrats have acquired a strong local power base with control of the local council; they are now coalition partners with the Conservatives in Birmingham City Council. In 2001 Labour had only a 2,578 majority over the Lib Dems, and Birmingham Council’s deputy leader, Lib Dem John Hemming, is preparing himself for a fourth crack at the seat.
But the Conservatives are readying themselves for a comeback, well aware that if they want to form a national government they must re-establish a significant electoral presence in England’s second city. They have chosen a new-style candidate for the seat, Paul Uppal, an Asian businessman and school governor who believes there is still a Conservative vote in Yardley.
Labour’s choice to take up the challenge is Jayne Innes, a GMB sponsored candidate who also has firm links with New Labour. John Reid, Tessa Jowell, Geoff Hoon and Margaret Hodge have already visited the constituency to support her. 
Proud of her union links, Innes has been involved at the heart of New Labour’s Treasury team, and worked on the Windfall Tax of privatised utility companies.
This is “how we got the money to set up New Deal in the first place”, she said.
Innes is passionate about the principles behind New Deal and runs an employment charity, Job Change, to give individuals the skills required to return to the modern labour market.
Recalling her time with the shadow team, she said: “That was a really important experience for me as a politician – now I am one of the few that can say … I’m a qualified teacher, I’ve worked in the public sector, I run a charity … and I’m one of the few that work heavily in the business community”.
Yardley is her first shot at Parliament, although she was on the Labour Party’s PPC shortlist in Wakefield. This is something that the Liberal Democrat PPC, John Hemming, is determined to focus on. Hemming describes himself as a “full time politician”; he is the Liberal Democrat leader on the City Council, and is well known in the area for his work on the Phoenix Consortium, which bought MG Rover from BMW.
He brands Innes the “Labour candidate from Wakefield”. And says: “She is not committed to the constituency … she is not committed to Yardley, where is her commitment to Birmingham?” Mr Hemming said that by contrast his family history in the Midlands stretched back over 500 years.
But Innes says she only stood in Wakefield because “I never dreamt that Estelle would be standing down”. Describing herself as “very, very local”, Innes adds that she feels a “really good match for this area” as the issues that are important here, such as post-industrial employment, anti-social behaviour and council housing are “all the issues that I feel very passionately about”.
Uppal was named as a candidate only last week after having gone through the Conservative’s City Seats Initiative, which saw a team of Conservative candidates working and canvassing across the Birmingham constituencies. But he dismisses suggestions that this late nomination could harm his chances, saying: “I think though people in Yardley have the interests of Yardley at heart … they are also Brummies and their interests are the interests of Birmingham.”
Uppal says his key philosophies are self-reliance and personal freedom. Stressing that the Conservatives held the seat 1979-1992, he adds: “I want to basically say to people who voted Conservative in the past that if you want pragmatic conservative policies from your next member of parliament, don’t vote for an imitation of it, vote for the real thing.” 
In multi-cultural Birmingham there is certainly sensitivity about Tory plans to cut immigration and its tough talk on asylum quotas. But Uppal says the proposals would restore fairness to the system and ensure that race relations in Birmingham remain good.
“What worries people at the moment is that we seem to have lost control of our borders, in a sense that the situation is now unfair,” he said.
Anti-social behaviour is set to be a key issue, and Innes dismissed Hemming’s claims that he is acting on the issue, saying: “If he is doing this I want to know where he is doing it because I can’t find any evidence that he is.”
There is a “huge” litter problem across the constituency, she says, and the Lib Dems “don’t seem to be able to deal with it at all”.
But Hemming said he thought it was “odd” that Labour had chosen to pick on this issue. The Liberal Democrats have more than tripled the number of ASBOs issued since they took over the authority, he says, and the evidence shows “we are actually better at handling the issue and actually take more action and are firmer in the way that we respond to it”.
But his words cut no ice with Innes. She says the Lib Dems have been in power in the council for “years and years” and “looking around this constituency I don’t know what the councillors have been doing”.
For his part Uppal says: “As legislators and as politicians we can certainly push things as far as we can, but essentially a lot of those problems do stem from within families and we have got to look at maybe supporting those families and seeing what are the issues there.”
Innes also wants action on the labyrinth-like subways that stink of urine, are covered in graffiti and litter and have no CCTV or corner mirrors.
“The subways along Coventry Road are absolutely disgusting. Five lives have been
