PUBLIC OPINION HAS MOVED TO THE LEFT ON KEY ISSUES

FOR much of its period in office, this Tory-led Government has stood accused of being out of touch with the British people.

When I made my maiden speech in the House of Commons on 25 May 2010, I implored the Government to learn the lessons of history. I said the power of the state can be a force for good, but my words fell on deaf ears.

Now, four-and-a-half-years after my parliamentary debut, it isn’t just opposition politicians like me who are calling for a progressive alternative – the public are calling for it too.

A range of opinion polls have indicated that the public’s verdict on this Government’s policies has resulted in public opinion moving to the left.

Take the issue of income tax. One of the Coalition’s most shameless moments, was when struggling families saw their tax credits slashed, on the same day that people earning over £150,000 were handed a 10 per cent tax cut.

That decision defined this Government. Tory MPs, aided and abetted by Liberal Democrats, reverted to a quintessentially Conservative Party doctrine of rewarding the rich, at the expense of everyone else.

Labour has pledged to reinstate the 50p tax rate on incomes above £150,000, but a YouGov poll shows a majority would go even further, introducing it at £100,000 instead. Moreover, 56 per cent of the population would welcome a 75 per cent tax rate on annual salaries above £1m.

At the other end of the earnings scale, a poll by Survation shows six in 10 people want the minimum wage increased to the Living Wage rate of £7.65 outside London.

On zero hours contracts too, the public is longing for change. Labour plans to give employees the right to demand fixed-hours contracts after working for the same employer for six months. But this Government won’t contemplate such a move, even though YouGov shows 56 per cent want a complete ban on these contracts, compared to just 25 per cent against.

As for private rented housing, YouGov says 45 per cent want the state to cap private sector rents, compared to 43 per cent against.

In education, an ICM poll also shows that most people oppose academies, preferring local councils to be accountable for schools instead.

There are many other areas too where the public seems to have moved to the left. According to YouGov, an overwhelming majority want to see the energy companies, railways and Royal Mail renationalised and more than half support a ‘Robin Hood’ tax on financial transactions.

So do these changes represent a political reawakening, or are they just indicative of a nation that’s had enough of being savaged by four-and-a-half years of Tory policies?

People can make their own minds up, but the conclusion that this Government is hopelessly out-of-touch with the British people is increasingly difficult to dispute.

FAUX CONCERN FOR FAMILIES CAN’T CONCEAL IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT’S DAMAGING POLICIES

WHEN I heard the news yesterday I wasn’t sure if I was listening to an updated adaptation of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ for one of Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’ series.

I thought it must be Rory Bremner or Alistair McGowan doing a particularly good impression of the Prime Minister’s voice making a newspeak announcement.

He said: “Every single domestic policy that the Government comes up with will be examined for its impact on the family…For me, nothing matters more than family. It's at the centre of my life and the heart of my politics”.

I was astonished when I realised that it really was the Prime Minister and not a fictional spokesman from the Ministry of Truth.

I’m sure people won’t be hoodwinked by this faux concern when the average working family will be £2,073 a year worse off by the next General Election thanks to this Government’s tax and benefit changes.

Alarming new data shows that, in total, David Cameron’s government has taken £15bn in support away from children and families.

These figures are no surprise when you consider the policy prospectus Mr Cameron has put in place since his Tories joined forces with the Lib Dems to form a government in 2010.

There was the bedroom tax, which affected some 220,000 households across the country, impacting directly on as many as 375,000 children.

Cuts to maternity pay, tax credits and support for new families show that the average family with a new born baby is £2,000 worse off, according to the House of Commons Library.

Then there were the cuts to claimable childcare costs through the working tax credit, meaning some families lost £1,500 per year.

All this, at a time when childcare costs have risen five times faster than wages, and when there are 628 fewer Sure Start Children’s Centres offering some 35,000 fewer places.

Add into the mix the fact that the average family has seen their energy bill rise by more than £300 since the last General Election, and it’s easy to see why many have faced a tough few years.

In fact the £2,000-plus that the average family finds itself short-changed by, is likely to be just part of the story. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that any family which falls into two or more of the categories detailed above will find itself significantly worse off.

That is what’s so totally unfair about this Government’s counterproductive austerity programme. Millions have had their standard of living diminished by a Cabinet stuffed full of millionaires who have enhanced their own privileged circumstances through the policies this Government has pursued.

The only sense in which this Government has put families first is by placing them right at the front of the queue for cuts, somewhere up there with the NHS and other public services.

It is only when a Labour Government returns to power that those families who the Prime Minister feigns to care about so deeply, will feel any sense of respite; and it is a day which can’t come quickly enough.

THE FUTURE OF BRITAIN’S YOUNG PEOPLE DEPENDS ON LABOUR

INTERNATIONAL Youth Day came and went last week without too much media attention. And yet unemployment, low pay, zero hour contracts and access to housing have hit young people particularly hard and this Government’s cuts programme is making matters far worse.

However, in contrast to the media’s failure to acknowledge International Youth Day, the public service union, UNISON, published a new report on cuts in youth services, as part of its ‘Damage’ series.

The UK’s youth services: how cuts are removing opportunities for young people and damaging their lives, is now available online at http://www.unison.org.uk/catalogue/22532

The report is based on two pieces of research: a Freedom of Information request sent to every council in the UK, to find out the extent of the cuts in youth services since 2012, and a survey of UNISON members, asking questions about the impact of the cuts on young people and the communities they live in.

The key findings discovered that:

• More than 2000 youth service jobs have been lost since 2012
• 350 youth centres have closed as a result of the cuts
• 41,000 youth service places for young people have been cut
• At least 35,000 hours of outreach work by youth workers have been removed
• Youth service spending has been cut by £60 million since 2012, and since 2010 the figure is £259m

The report makes clear that cuts to youth services lead to increased poverty, crime, higher youth unemployment and an increase in teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. These factors will have major knock-on effects on communities, the criminal justice system, the health service and the economy.

But rather than investing in our young people, this Government is hidebound by its neoliberal ideology, which is causing untold damage to Britain’s future generations. It makes the removal of the Tories and Liberal Democrats at the next election absolutely imperative.

But we also need to make sure that we in the Labour Party offer a genuinely progressive alternative. Implementing a radical programme in Government to create a new social democratic consensus similar to what we achieved in 1945 is essential.

The future wellbeing of Britain depends on us being brave and bold, taking on and defeating the corporate interests who have used globalisation to impoverish millions and enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. Failure is not an option for us!

GOVT'S INDIFFERENCE TO CLIMATE CHANGE INCREASES DERBY’S FLOOD RISK

AN extra 330,000 properties will end up at risk of flooding over the next 20 years, thanks to this Government’s record on flood protection.

That’s another reason why Britain desperately needs Labour Government to protect our climate for families, their homes and businesses.

The problem stems from a mindset within the Conservative Party which has been guilty of indifference, inaction and downright hostility towards the very existence of climate change.

Unless action is taken, the consequences for Britain will be enormous. We’ve seen here in Derby how cuts to funding for flood defence work has left Chester Green exposed in the event of severe weather affecting the River Derwent.

We need to get investment in flood defence back on track as well as taking action on climate change by investing in renewable energy. Reducing demand for energy is also essential by financing a massive home insulation programme.

Such actions will not only reduce exposure to flooding and reduce the UK’s carbon emissions, it will also generate hundreds of thousands of good quality new jobs too.

DAVID CAMERON - A 21st CENTURY RICHARD II?

A few days after the Peasants Revolt was put down in 1381, King Richard ii made a speech in which he said:

"Peasants you were and peasants you are.

"You will remain in bondage not as before, but in an incomparably worse state.

"For as long as we are alive to achieve this, and by the grace of God rule this kingdom, we shall work with our minds, powers and possessions to keep you in such subjection that the abject state of your servitude may be an object lesson to posterity."

We need to ensure David Cameron, who is related to royalty, doesn't get another five years to inflict a 21st century version of Richard ii's menacing and pitiless peroration

GOVE’S GONE BUT THE FREE SCHOOL DEBACLE CONTINUES

THE axe may have fallen on Michael Gove’s tenure as Education Secretary, but it would be a mistake to confuse the Prime Minister’s tactical manoeuvring with a genuine agenda for change.

Far from being concerned by the radical attacks on education, David Cameron seems to have been delighted as Mr Gove has taken schools to the brink of privatisation and stripped power away from local authorities.

But the gross unpopularity of Mr Gove has made him a liability, and Mr Cameron’s decision was focussed purely on clinging on to votes ahead of next year’s General Election.

In all my adult life I have never known an education minister invoke such loathing among teaching professionals, unions and parents alike, as that directed towards Mr Gove.

He has stood in Conservative Party conferences and all-but accused teachers of being good-for-nothings without a care in the world for the education of children. He has moved the goalposts so many times that education professionals don’t know whether they are coming or going.

And he has imposed changes, like his disastrous ‘free schools’ programme, which has used young people as pawns in the Conservative Party’s foolish ambition to privatise as many public services as possible.

We have had first-hand experience in Derby of the Conservatives allowing their preposterous party political dogma to trump blindingly obvious common sense.

The shambolic introduction of the Al-Madinah Free School in my home city of Derby, and the failure to involve the local council in its running, put the education of hundreds of local children at great risk. Other examples of free school failures have emerged up and down the country.

Within hours of Mr Cameron’s announcement, social media was rife with jokes and quips about the welcome end of an era following Mr Gove’s move to Chief Whip. Somebody even went to the trouble to create an app allowing users to hit a cartoon figure of Mr Gove, and it predictably went viral.

But among the humour and delight of teachers and parents alike, we should not lose sight of the fact that, much of the damage has already been done.

In all the euphoria over Mr Gove’s departure, it’s worth remembering that at no point has the Prime Minister declared that his party will backtrack on any of Mr Gove’s more extreme policies.

On the contrary, from what I can see it’s business as usual. Mr Gove has played the bad guy brilliantly, but his removal in the cabinet reshuffle is just cynical window dressing 10 months before the General Election.

I’m afraid the dark clouds that have formed over schools across our country in the last four years show no signs of clearing while the Conservatives remain in Government.

WHY I BECAME A VEGAN

THERE are meat-eaters who abhor animal cruelty and vegans who are driven by matters other than animal welfare. But, in my case, the two have always been intrinsically linked.

I vividly remember being horrified as a 14-year-old given a summer job by my local butcher.
Having been led to believe I would be serving behind the counter, I was surprised on my first day to find myself exposed to the slaughterhouse next door.

Rather than serving up some prime steak for Mrs Smith or chicken fillets for Mr Brown, my unglamorous job was to feed sheep intestines through my fingers to be used for sausage skin.

But if that was unpleasant enough, nothing could have prepared me for some of the other horrors that I experienced on that first day.

I saw the fear in the eyes of the animals who were about to be killed. I can still picture that now, just as I can still smell the rank scent of death which filled the air in that awful place.

It was an experience that stayed with me for life and something that influenced my eventual decision that I could no longer partake in this industry.

I made that choice in 1976, some five years after that dreadful experience in the butcher's slaughterhouse.
Thinking back, I was inspired by people like Mahatma Gandhi, who said: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

I can even remember hearing Spike Milligan discussing his vegetarianism as he was being interviewed on the Michael Parkinson Show. That unquestionably influenced me, too, and may well have been the deciding factor. But, for me, becoming a vegan was less about emulating my heroes or making a statement.

It was much more about taking what seemed to be the next natural step, as a 19-year-old who was beginning to come to terms with some of the social injustices that would epitomise much of the next couple of decades.

It was an era that shaped the person and politician I became. My ideologies and beliefs were shaped in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and becoming a vegan was part of that.

Cruelty seemed inherent within the meat industry. So why would I want to partake in such a thing when I felt so passionately about it?

I joined the Hunt Saboteurs Association at around the same time and was elected on to the League Against Cruel Sports' board of trustees in 1979. It's a position I still hold with pride. And I'm as passionate now about fighting against cruelty to animals as I was back then. That made it easy for me to take my natural position on debates such as fox-hunting before that was finally resolved by the last Labour Government. It also sheds some light on why I have been such a vocal opponent of the appalling badger cull which remains in place, even if our campaign against it has forced the Tory-led Government to slow its progress. All that is because it is easy to campaign on an issue when it rankles with the belief systems you hold at your very core.

I abhor cruelty in any form and the way in which animals are reared has become more intensive, which has inevitably compromised welfare. But there are so many other reasons to believe that eating animals is fundamentally wrong, especially at a time when the earth's natural resources are under intense pressure and energy efficiency is more topical than ever.

Farmed animals consume 13 pounds of grain for every pound of meat produced. It is an incredibly wasteful use of land. It would be far more efficient to eat the crops directly rather than feeding them to animals first. Food crops can produce up to 15 times more protein per acre than each acre of land set aside for meat production.

Even more perversely, farmed fish need to be fed five pounds of wild-caught fish for every pound of flesh produced for human consumption.

It is grossly inefficient and makes no sense whatsoever.

In terms of energy consumption, 11 times more fossil fuel is exhausted to make a calorie of animal protein than it takes to make a calorie of food protein. And the livestock industry is responsible for nearly 20 per cent of the world's climate changing emissions.

Add in other alarming statistics, such as the fact that 50% of antibiotics are used to tackle health problems of animals being reared in intensive conditions, and it casts a dark shadow over the whole meat industry.

So, while my original decision was about cruelty to animals, there are dozens of other factors that reinforce my view that veganism is not just about morals, but about making a sustainable life choice.

Population growth and environmental considerations mean that meat consumption at present levels is untenable. Consequently, the likelihood is that, for future generations, a vegan diet will be the norm rather than the exception that it is today.