Kate Hollern MP: 'Families have been exposed to catastrophic costs'

This week Parliament closed up shop ahead of next week’s local elections. For Parliamentarians, it was a week of late-night votes and uncertainty about when exactly we would be making our way back to our constituencies as the Government tried to see off some of the remaining scraps of their agenda.  I returned to a busy weekend in my constituency, with a visit to the White House Deaf Residential Centre, at Feniscowles, meetings about DWP closures, the situation in India, and of course the Elections.

However, back in Westminster, under the cover of crises from lawbreaking to rule dodging, this Government have used their majority in the Commons to scupper our democracy, clamp down on protest and free speech.

I’ve written many times about the Government’s levelling up initiative, Downing Street’s take on sharing opportunities equally around the country, something that has still – up until now – been about nothing but words and slogans. A plan yet to be proven. 

Indeed, decisions such as the one to close buildings such as the DWP Cardwell Place offices fly in the face of supposed levelling up.

But no one can deny the serious need to change the way things work across our cities and towns; the powers, money, and responsibility to make sure that people and places across the country are set free to be more and to do more.  

This isn’t disconnected from the different crises that we’re seeing today and that many of are you feeling the brunt of. Granted, we can’t always predict the way our economy will blow – like rising inflation, which is making the weekly shop tougher than ever – but the systems that have always been there to support some of the hardest pressed and most vulnerable have been torn apart or neglected by this Government.  

I sat on the Levelling Up Committee this week where we heard evidence about the adult social care system, a system funded by a mixture of central government grants, local government finance settlements and council tax.  

So many families have been exposed to catastrophic costs around social care largely because of the drastic underfunding of local government over the past decade.  

These are the real problems and potentials that we’re presented with. The Government have ignored this real situation to chase ideas that mark a dark turn for our country and have dragged their feet to live up to the ambitions of our communities.  

As the Government pushed their Elections Bill through Parliament, many of us on opposition benches spoke about how the Conservative plan to bring in Voter ID to our elections was a solution looking for a problem. 

While their costly plan won’t make much of a difference to already low rates of voter fraud (there’s been one voter fraud conviction out of 47 million voters), it will mean that up to 2 million voters could be disenfranchised, not being able to take part in our elections to vote for the people who govern them and represent them.  

Their plans are paving the way for Government interference in what’s supposed to be an independent Electoral Commission and messing around with the way our elections are run.  

While thousands of families across the country are getting ready to offer a warm welcome to those fleeing the war in Ukraine, the Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill was making its way through Parliament, a shameful piece of work that has been condemned by the United Nations refugee agency and will make it harder for us to welcome those fleeing dreadful situations and lock up traffickers.  

The Government have spent time pushing an agenda that does not speak to the needs and challenges of the country, families and communities are going through a broad mix of challenges that have been a decade in the making.  

Times are certainly turbulent in Westminster at present.  But we continue to do our best for people in Blackburn and across Lancashire and with Ramadan coming to an end I wish all residents of the Muslim faith ‘Eid Mubarak’ at this time.