“We know that the Tories will not help working class people. We need a Labour Government who will alleviate the inequalities that are the root cause of many of our social ills.”
By Ian Lavery MP
In the past few weeks we have watched the Tory Government produce the King’s Speech outlining its legislative plans for the next year and the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement, which set out his current fiscal plans. Both of these occasions revealed a distressing lack of care for the people that the Labour Movement is here to defend; both showed a callous disregard for our people’s living standards and well being.
The United Kingdom is in crisis. Our public services are collapsing and working class people are suffering a horrendous cost of living crisis that is draining them of the resources they and their families need to live fulfilling, decent lives. A Government with even an iota of human decency would have presented plans for the next year that could address these grave crises. Instead, they have delivered an agenda that will do absolutely nothing to alleviate these crises; in fact they are happy to draft statutes and plan Government spending that will make them worse.
Working class people know what it’s like to be forgotten, to be neglected and to be offered nothing by Tory Governments. They know that Tory Governments have caused many of the problems they face, not just those caused by the past 13 years of Tory rule, but as legacies of previous Tory Governments as well. It is the Tories who over the years have not only destroyed the industrial base we have needed to produce well paying jobs, but have also passed and continue to pass anti-trade union legislation that will deprive working class people in the UK of the means to obtain the decent wages they deserve.
The last 13 years have seen wages across many sectors decline in real terms, forcing many union members to take strike action. In the private sector they have seen their wages decline at the same time Company Directors and CEO’s have seen their remuneration packages grow grotesquely. In the public sector, many of those who showed their dedication to service so courageously during the Covid Pandemic, have been forced to take strike action not only to seek to restore their own wages, but to try to redress crippling staff shortage caused in no small measure by the Tory public sector wage squeeze that has made staff retention and recruitment so difficult.
In the King’s Speech the Tory’s draconian response to the problems faced by workers in the public sector has been to to deprive them and those in the transport industries of their democratic right to strike. They announced that they intend to use the powers they have created under the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act of 2023, to lay down minimum service levels during strikes in the health services, transport services and others sectors. By doing so they will force many into work against their will and will allow them to be sacked if they refuse. It has been reported recently that the so called “minimum service levels” will require up ot 75% of those in the transport industries who are on strike to work. This is an assault on union members’ human rights and we all must give our utmost support to those who resist this outrage.
We shockingly live in a rich country in which foodbanks have become normalised, in which people are life expectancy has decreased because of the neglect of the NHS and in which there is a severe housing shortage. Nothing in the King’s Speech or the Autumn Statement will go any way towards alleviating these horrendous facts. The announcements will just make them worse. The cost of living crisis, in which the price of energy is a big factor, continues and yet the Chancellor failed even to announce an extension to his previous inadequate fuel poverty assistance payments. His Autumn Statement means that as a result of inflation Health and Education Departments will face real term cuts in budget cuts. Nothing in either statement said anything meaningful to ease the housing shortage. They said nothing about providing much needed social housing or to give those in the private rental sector protection.
Of course, we know that the Tories will not help working class people. We need a Labour Government that will. We need a Labour Government who will alleviate the inequalities that are the root cause of many of our social ills. We need a Labour Government that will not shy away from the progressive wealth taxes we need to fund the public services our people depend upon. We need a Labour Government who will go even further to restore Trade Union rights than the welcomed measures the Labour Leadership have announced. We need a Labour Government that will stop the destruction of our people’s wellbeing.
- Ian Lavery is the MP for Wansbeck, you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram and twitter.
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