A&E Services

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech during this debate.

Earlier this year, our A&E department at Salford Royal hospital—a flagship of NHS excellence—endured a period of crisis that was a symptom not just of the national shortfall in funding but of the far wider challenges we face in my constituency of Salford and Eccles. None the less, Salford, Eccles, Swinton and Pendlebury collectively make an amazing place to live, in terms of both the spirit of their people and their ambition to achieve the unthinkable.

We have a rich political history. I am a proud socialist, and if any city personifies the struggles of the working class and the Labour movement, it is Salford. Salford was pivotal in the creation of the trade union movement, with Salford and Manchester trades councils founding the TUC in 1868. On 1 October 1931, thousands swarmed to Salford town hall, where a violent demonstration took place. It came to be known as the battle of Bexley Square. They were protesting at the 10% cut in unemployment benefit introduced by the new national Government. Sadly, we face similar struggles in Salford and Eccles today.

Freidrich Engels’s pioneering work, “The Condition of the Working Class”, was inspired by the struggles he witnessed in Salford, where he owned a factory and could often be found drinking in The Crescent pub with Karl Marx. Members will be delighted to know that Engels’s magnificent beard has inspired a climbing wall sculpture in Salford. The 16-foot beard statue—a “symbol of wisdom and learning”—will stand on the University of Salford’s campus. Members will be able to scale the impressive beard to a viewing platform at the top, where they might find time to rest and contemplate.

We are a city facing the legacy of post-industrial decline. Members may recall the song “Dirty Old Town”, penned by Ewan MacColl and later sung by, among others, The Pogues, about finding love in 20th century industrial Salford by the gasworks wall. The gasworks wall still exists today, but Salford’s gas industry has largely disappeared, along with our mining community, destroyed in the 1980s, as was our large shipping, engineering and manufacturing base. Thousands of lives, hopes and dreams were shattered, with generations locked in a cycle of low-paid unskilled work. We were told that free market globalisation of industry would eventually see wealth trickle down from the top. We are still waiting.

We were a city on its knees and we can be thankful for the foresight of Salford’s Labour councillors who encouraged investment and growth. They championed the transformation of the derelict docks into Salford Quays, now a residential and cultural quarter housing the Lowry gallery, theatre and shopping centre. Again, it was the Salford Labour Council and our local MPs who ensured the building of Media City, the new headquarters for the BBC and ITV, against resistance from a southern-based media that saw anything north of the Watford gap as a social and cultural backwater.

I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Hazel Blears. Elected alongside a record number of women MPs in 1997, Hazel is admired by many, including me, for breaking the glass ceiling not just for women in Salford but for all women from working-class back grounds like myself. Indeed, much of Hazel’s time in the House was dedicated to promoting schemes that would give young people from disadvantaged areas the chance to forge a career in politics and other vocations.

I would also like to honour Ian Stewart, who served as MP from 1997 to 2010, for the now abolished constituency of Eccles. Ian was a proud trade unionist, like myself, who never forgot the poverty and struggles of his childhood. Recently, in his current role as Mayor of Salford, Ian urged the Government to rethink the savage cuts to the Salford City Council budget, austerity measures that are neither justified nor necessary. These cuts are now sawing through the bones of our already fragile public services and they severely impact on the most vulnerable.

It might startle hon. Members to hear that life expectancy in the more deprived parts of my constituency is lower than the life expectancy of people living in the Gaza strip. Some 30% of children in parts of my constituency live in poverty. Our unemployment rates are above the national average and our wages for those in work far below it. Many families are trapped in a cycle of poverty and low-paid and insecure work. The gap between rich and poor is now growing at a faster rate than in the Victorian era. Evidence from the world over indicates that health outcomes are linked not just to material poverty but economic inequality. It reduces social cohesion, leading to more stress, fear, and insecurity, which places even greater strain on our NHS and public services. Our NHS will only truly succeed when we invest in people and their quality of life. That means adequate funding for our public services, decent and affordable housing, well-paid secure jobs and a clear and apparent reduction in income inequality between those at the top and those at the bottom.

My constituency and its people have a proud socialist history. I intend to use my time in the House to fight for them to have a proud socialist future as well.