Education and Health

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to address the House for the first time. It is a great pleasure to follow the very many hon. Members who have also done so and have spoken so passionately about their constituencies. I will listen with interest over the next few days as many more Members do the same.

Our duty to our constituents is one that we share in all parts of the House, and this debate could not be more relevant to my constituents in Wigan. Even with the much-needed investment over the past 13 years, people in Wigan still get sick earlier and die younger, and too many of their children leave school without good jobs to go to or without the qualifications they need for the jobs that there are. Those facts are a scar on the conscience of this House, and we must not rest until social justice is a reality in Wigan and across the country.

I know that that is a view that I share with my predecessor, Neil Turner. Neil drew on several decades of experience in, and service to, local government when he arrived in the House 11 years ago after the tragic death of his predecessor, Roger Stott. In his leading role in SIGOMA—the special interest group of municipal authorities—which is the campaigning network for local authorities, Neil fought hard for better public services, particularly housing, which was one of his passions. He was proud to be a Parliamentary Private Secretary to a number of Ministers, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), who has done such important work in this field. Neil was also a leading light in another of his passions—the all-party rugby league group—and I think it is fair to say that he has taught me literally everything I know about rugby league.

However, it is for his tireless work in redressing inequality in health funding that I think Neil will really be remembered. He fought for, and got, recognition that places such as Wigan were chronically and unfairly underfunded. The results of this change in Wigan have been visible and striking. To suggest that his work has saved lives is not an overstatement: it could not be more important to the people I now represent. It is this perseverance that marks Neil out both as a politician and as a person. It is rooted in a generosity and a kindness from which I have also benefited. His refusal to give up when he was told, firmly, “No”, was a beacon of hope to a people who frankly deserved better, and an example that I am determined to follow.

Neil and I are both part of a long line of Labour representatives of Wigan that stretches all the way back to 1918. Many hon. Members will know much of Wigan’s history. It is a town that has endured great hardship, but at great cost. From the great depression to the extreme poverty and deprivation that George Orwell railed against in “The Road to Wigan Pier,” Wigan has achieved extraordinary things, too often against the odds.

The scars that still run deepest in my constituency are those that were formed by the decimation of the town’s historic mining and industrial base in the 1980s. It was in that divisive and heated decade that my politics were forged. I grew up in the north-west believing that the Government not only did not speak up for people like me, but actively opposed us. My challenge to the new Government is not to repeat that bitter experience.

I address that challenge to both sides of the House. In Wigan, there is pride in what we have achieved, but that is mixed with frustration at what we have not, and fear for the future. I believe we can and must do more. For the past five years, I have worked at the Children’s Society with some remarkable children caught up in that situation. It has been devastating to see them living with the consequences of decades of under-investment, and growing up in poverty with inadequate housing. However, it has been equally devastating to work with their classmates, who fled persecution abroad to seek safety in the UK, but who often have been blamed for the problems faced by their peers. We owe it to those children not to play politics with their lives and to challenge the politics of fear and hatred, rather than pander to it.

I believe there is reason to hope for better. I am privileged to come from a family that spans a wide political spectrum from liberalism to Marxism, which gives me the belief that things can be better, that assumptions can be challenged and that those things can be achieved without delay, however difficult the times. Wigan has bucked the national trend through the efforts of its excellent council and many hard-working community groups. We have kept youth unemployment low and attracted new investment, such as from the Tote and Keep Britain Tidy. We have retained important employers, such as Heinz, and have world-class rugby league and football teams, which crucially support a strong network of community sports clubs.

Perhaps more importantly, through testing times Wigan has always fought against the politics of hate with the politics of hope. The story of Wigan is the story of a community that has refused to be characterised by poverty, despair or fear throughout its history. No group could better embody that than Wigan and Leigh United Against Racism, whose thriving and energetic presence I am proud to be associated with.

It is with that sense of energy and ambition that I approach this Parliament. I am ambitious for positive new solutions where they are so badly needed, but I am also ambitious for respect for those policies that have served us so well. We must continue to invest in social housing, including council housing, and we must strive for a level playing field in education if we want a society in which the choices we make are more important than what we are born into. Decent workplace rights and strong trade unions will always be the most fundamentally effective way to tackle fear about immigration. If we are serious about showing people that we are on their side, we should back the living wage and the minimum income guarantee. We must lift people up, not drive others down.

We face a clear choice in this Parliament: a fairer, more equal society or a return to the inequality and despair of the 1980s. My promise to this House is to work tirelessly, fairly and constructively to achieve the former, but my promise to the people of Wigan is to fight every inch of the way if they face the latter. There is a generation of children and young people in my constituency who are expecting us to succeed, and there are older generations who have worked tirelessly for just that. We must do the same in this House, because we cannot afford to fail.