Labour is a Disappointment...
Being in government is about making hard choices. It is not easy and for every individual there are likely to be times when they think a government should have acted in a different way. It is also obvious that people will remember the disappointments, especially if there is a personal attachment to the issue, than good news.
Whilst I have my own disappointments I think we should not lose sight of what the Labour government has achieved for the whole nation, and Labour supporters in particular, both nationally and locally.
I came into politics and joined Labour to see a few major changes. I got involved in politics as a teenager because of the gross inequality, poverty and starvation I saw in the developing world, whilst we in the West sat on wine lake, butter and Beef Mountains. I could not understand how a government and a people could ignore the plight of millions. I joined a political party - Labour - in the 1980s because of what I saw the Tories doing to our economy and our public services. I hated the daily sight of unemployment and the misery it caused. A Tory government created the worst two recessions in recent history throwing literally millions onto the scrapheap and saying it was a price worth paying. I had to sit and watch as the Tories starved public services of the money they needed to survive and to deliver decent services.
This is what made me angry enough to want to do something. Six years into a Labour government what have we done?
Well on the international development front, Britain can now be proud of its record, no longer needing to hang its head in shame. Gordon Brown has led the way in the G8 on debt relief, on the Millennium Development Goals and now on encouraging a world International Financing Facility of $50bn a year to lift the worst out of poverty and offer hope to hundreds of millions across the globe. Under Labour we have halted 20 years of decline in our aid budget.
On the economy we have done much more than we ever promised. The terrible scourge of unemployment - and in particular long term and youth unemployment - has been eradicated. We now have the lowest unemployment rates for 30 years and youth and long term unemployment have been slashed by 80% in Loughborough thanks to the New Deal. There are now 1.7 million more people in work than in 1997 and unemployment is well below a million. In the Loughborough area unemployment is at around 2%. Long gone are the days of 10% unemployment and 4 million on the dole under the Tories.
Whilst the rest of the world has been depressed through recession under Labour the economy has continued to grow year on year. This in itself is a remarkable feat for any government in a global economy that has been buffeted by a number of shocks over the last decade. This has made it difficult for manufacturing and I have urged the government to do more, but here again we have to be realistic. In a global economy it is increasingly difficult to compete, and we cannot shut ourselves off from the outside world. We need to compete on the basis of a knowledge skills economy not on lowest wages.
Not only has unemployment fallen month on month, but those in work have benefited from low inflation - in and around the 2-2,5% mark for the last 6 years and interest rates at their lowest for a generation, saving the average mortgage payer about half of what they were paying under the Tories.
It has not been enough simply to get people back to work but we have given more - the introduction of the minimum wage, and family tax credits which give a family in work the guarantee of a decent weekly income. For those at work rights have been extended to join trade unions, enjoy greater holiday guarantees, working time directives, equal rights for part time workers and maternity pay and leave. The list goes on.
Finally, on public services the record could not be equalled in our recent history. As somebody who worked through a decade of Tory cuts in public services the year on year above inflation increases in resources is having a real impact. There is always more that can be done and more will be done. I have likened this investment to water flowing into a dried up river bed. As the water flows it firstly falls between the cracks in the hardened river bed, but after a time the water then starts to flow across the surface.
The dried up river bed is our public services. It was decades of underinvestment in things like transport and hospital capacity that mean even with large injections of money it takes time to see the results. A new train is obvious but the expensive relaying of worn out track is not obvious in the short term - but absolutely necessary in the long run.
In health and education and policing the extra money has gone into employing more teachers, doctors, nurses and police. These are now at record levels, and they are making a difference.
In health locally for example we have our new 10 million Loughborough hospital as well as a new walk in centre. We have more doctors and nurses and waiting times for nearly every area are falling. I know it is difficult to see an improvement when you have a 2 month wait - but in many cases before 1997 that may have been a 15 month wait.
None of this is to pretend we live in a perfect world. If it was we could pack up and go home tomorrow. No there is much more to do, and we live in a period when globalisation and the pace of change threaten our certainties. There are many more areas I could cover where the Labour government has done really positive things and I am sure there are individual areas where more could be done.
I have had my differences with the direction of the government sometimes, like over Iraq and have wished at times we could be more radical. But the one thing I have never lost sight of is the enormous difference of having a Labour government to that of the Tories. And anybody who says that there is no difference between Labour and the Tories need only look back over recent history to remember 4 million unemployed, 100,000 houses repossessed, interest rates at 15% for a year and year on year cuts to our schools and hospitals.
Andy Reed MP