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There's still tens of thousands of voters for me to meet across Stretford & Urmston

Posted by Kate Green, MP for Stretford and Urmston, at 13:19, Thu 6 February 2014:

I’m usually in the constituency on a Friday, but last Friday I never made it into my office in Urmston. First thing, I visited the Kath Locke centre in Hulme, where Big Life have established a sanctuary where people with mental health problems who face a crisis or are struggling to cope can go to get initial support. It’s open 24/7, and it means for example that the police can take people there who are distressed and sometimes disruptive, rather than to a busy A&E department, or even more inappropriately, to a police cell. The project is funded until the summer, and I was very impressed with what I saw. I’ll be pressing for the funding to be made permanent - I can see what a difference it would make to have a service like this in Trafford.

On Friday afternoon I went to meet the head of the Lesbian and Gay Foundation to discuss improving healthcare for LGBT people, and how specialist voluntary organisations can help. I had a meeting with the Social Action Research Foundation, who have been researching how communities in Greater Manchester cope with poverty and support one another. Then I joined up with Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central, to visit the AQA offices in her constituency to meet members of the union Unison. AQA also have a site on Trafford Park, which the company want to sell, and the staff there are very worried about the future. Lucy and I went along to hear how we could support the union in their negotiations with the company management.

I started Saturday with an advice surgery, and then headed out to the doorsteps in Flixton and Davyhulme to speak to voters. I really enjoy that part of being an MP – I must have talked to thousands of voters in Stretford and Urmston over the past 4 years, but that still leaves tens of thousands for me to meet!

I did get into my Urmston office on Monday, to meet representatives of the North West ambulance service to discuss their campaign to locate defibrillators in town centres across the region. They told me there will be two arriving in Urmston soon – watch out for more details!

Then I took the train to London where I was leading for Labour on a so-called Delegated Legislation Committee. This was looking at the government's new fees which separated parents who pay or receive child maintenance will have to pay to use the Child Maintenance Service. There are a lot of concerns about these fees, and I had a lot of questions to put to the minister.

I then went along to the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) where Ed Miliband was describing planned reforms to the way the Labour party and the unions relate to one another. Trade unions in this area have been great allies of mine – for example, I’ve worked with USDAW on campaigns to keep shop workers safe at work, on changes to tax credits which affect part-time workers, and on support for older women in the workplace and, as I said, I’m working with Unison now to support my constituents who work at AQA. I’ve also campaigned with GMB, Unite and Unison on the NHS. So I want the link to be strengthened, and to have close relationships between Labour and the trade unions locally. Ed’s proposal for individual union members who want to register as supporters of the Labour party to have the chance to do so is one I very much welcome. It will mean we can communicate more effectively about opportunities to campaign together locally.

On Tuesday, I met one of the companies that runs the government’s work programme, which aims to get long term unemployed people into jobs. It isn’t performing well, and I raised a number of concerns with the company. Then the directors of the company that owns the Trafford Centre came to see me. They’re especially concerned about the level of business rates, but there is a tension between supporting local high streets like Urmston, Partington and Stretford and cutting business rates for out of town shopping centres.

In the afternoon did a quick online interview about fracking, an issue which is getting closer and closer to home. We heard the other day that United Utilities had been processing waste water from fracking at the Davyhulme plant until 2011, and there’s now exploratory drilling happening at Barton Moss. Barbara Keeley, the MP for Worsley and Eccles, and I are writing to the Environment Agency asking a number of questions about the process, and I’m also in correspondence with United Utilities to raise the concerns of local residents. I’m told there are no applications outstanding for waste water to be processed at Davyhulme now, but I’m watching the situation very carefully.

After the interview, I dropped into a briefing about rising fuel bills, and then attended a discussion about the Parole Board, and how it approaches the decisions it takes about who should be released early from prison. Finally, in the evening, representatives of the Greater Manchester chamber of commerce hosted a dinner for MPs in parliament – a very enjoyable evening, and I was very encouraged to hear about the work they’re doing to map job opportunities and skills needs in the region over the next few years.

On Wednesday, my colleague Stephen Timms MP and I met the Queen Elizabeth Foundation, a charity that runs a residential training college for severely disabled people who want to retrain to get back to work. There are nine such colleges around the country, and their future is uncertain: their funding runs out in August and they don’t know if the government will renew it. Stephen and I agreed to table some questions to the government minister.

I then took part in a debate on the NHS, attended a rally for Kashmir solidarity day –it is shocking that, decades on, this conflict is still so far from resolution – went along to a briefing by the Runnymede Trust on the impact of local government cuts on black and ethnic minority communities, picked up a briefing pack from the British Heart Foundation, full of lots of statistics about Stretford and Urmston (cardiac disease is one of the main issues affecting some of the poorer areas in my constituency), and finished up at a brilliant exhibition of postcards organised by the charity United Response. They’d invited disabled people to design a postcard in any way they liked to express their thoughts and feelings (one person had even knitted postcard)! I loved this exhibition, and we’re going to try to get it back in parliament for a week so that many more people can see it.

The tubes were on strike, so I then walked from Westminster to Euston (45 minutes – great exercise!) to catch the train back to Manchester – a day early so I can help out in the Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election campaign. Lots of pounding the pavements involved – more excellent exercise.