We're not all in this together
Posted by Kate Green, MP for Stretford and Urmston, at 10:20, Fri 23 March 2012:
The two big stories in Parliament this week (and they really WERE big stories) were the final passing into law of the Health and Social Care bill, and the Chancellor’s budget.
Both are hugely controversial, and will prove highly damaging for ordinary families.
Labour’s fought the Health bill every step of the way. We opposed the top-down reorganisation (so did virtually every professional body and patients association), we opposed the postcode lottery that could be the result of local commissioning, and we opposed the emphasis on privatisation and competition in the NHS.
We didn’t persuade the government to drop the bill, but I’m delighted Andy Burnham’s committed Labour to repealing it as soon as we return to power.
It’s obvious why it’s so bad for the NHS. It’s a huge distraction for NHS managers, who have real challenges to get to grips with, and we’re already seeing the effects in Trafford. Our local community health services could be broken up, uncertainty about the future of Trafford General continues, and now we’ve heard we could lose an emergency ambulance to Salford - I’ve asked for an urgent meeting with the head of the North West ambulance service to discuss this latest alarming news.
The Health bill passed into law on Tuesday. The Chancellor announced his budget on Wednesday. It too attracted much criticism.
The independent Office for Budget Responsibility reviewed the budget proposals – and came to the conclusion they’d make absolutely no difference to growth. We’ve got approaching 3 million people out of work, yet George Osborne announced nothing in the budget that will create the new jobs we need.
The Chancellor told us the budget was good for business. There was an announcement of more investment for the Northern Hub – the major infrastructure project based to upgrade railway lines and platforms based around Victoria station. This is crucial for the development of our regional economy, but the Chancellor didn’t commit all the funding that’s needed.
But he did nothing to help businesses with business rates, and while he did cut corporation tax to 24%, that won’t help the smallest businesses – they only pay 20% now.
There was even worse news for families and pensioners. The Chancellor’s notorious “granny tax” will hit the pensioners who’ve saved hard into a private pension all their lives to give them some modest extra income in retirement. And while raising the threshold at which people in work start to pay income tax is good for some low earners, it does nothing to help the one third of people whose wages are too low to pay tax at all, and goes nowhere near to compensating the thousands of working families who are losing tax credits and seeing their child benefit frozen, yet face rising household bills.
The budget debate goes on for 4 days, and on Monday Labour will be voting against it. I spoke in the debate on Thursday to raise many of these concerns.
Back home in Trafford, I was interested to hear from the Breathe Clean Air campaign that Peel Holdings are investing in new projects on the Manchester Ship Canal. Campaigners are worried this will mean more pollution and emissions, and increased biomass waste going to the proposed plant at Davyhulme.
Yet while all this investment’s going on, Peel are still doing nothing for Partington. I’ve written to the chair of Peel Holdings to demand action on development in Partington. Trafford Council say they’re trying to find funding to kick-start development of the town centre, but local people have waited enough.
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