Deirdre Costigan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome the Secretary of State’s confirmation that there will be a full review of PIP in consultation with disabled people and their organisations. PIP was designed 13 years ago, but since then we have increased our understanding of the impact that fluctuating conditions and mental health problems can have on disabled people’s ability to live independently. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is certainly past time for a review of the PIP system to ensure that mental health problems are fully understood and that the fluctuating nature of some conditions is properly taken into account?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Terms and Conditions of Employment · Hansard source

  More

  I take the hon. Member’s point about the social care sector. Does he therefore welcome Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, which includes a negotiating framework for our social care staff, to ensure that they are properly paid and can progress in their jobs?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my Unison membership. I welcome the Bill, which is a once-in-a-generation chance to give more power to working people—including those in Ealing Southall—and I support the Government amendments to provide decent sick pay to 1.3 million low-paid workers. I do not support the Opposition’s amendments, which attempt to tie us up in knots in an effort to block working people from getting the rights they should be entitled to. I particularly want to consider the impact of the Bill and the Government amendments on disabled people. Currently, almost 3 million people are off work long-term sick—a record high. Of course, some of those are disabled people who are unable to work. However, there are also many disabled people who desperately want to work, but who have been kicked out of their job because their employer refused to make simple changes that would allow them to succeed. In my previous role as national disability officer for the country’s biggest trade union, Unison, we worked with Disability Rights UK and Scope to develop the disability employment charter. That charter is a list of improvements to help disabled people get, and keep, employment. Over 240 employers, both large and small, signed up to say that they backed the ideas in the charter—they backed disabled workers’ rights—but the previous Conservative Government saw it all as red tape. They did not listen, and they refused to introduce those changes. They left millions of disabled people who want to work stuck on benefits, and the Opposition’s amendments today are just more of the same. Those 240 employers that signed the disability employment charter, and the many disabled workers who have been pushed out of their jobs, will be heartened to see the changes being introduced in the new Employment Rights Bill. Many of those changes implement the demands of the charter, including allowing flexible working, more support for trade union disability reps, and strengthening sick pay. Those 240 employers would reject the Opposition’s many amendments whose aim is to frustrate this support for disabled workers. People are often surprised to learn that low-paid workers are not entitled to statutory sick pay, and that unless the employer company has its own scheme, they can claim statutory sick pay only after three days of being ill. During the pandemic, that led to social care staff, in particular, feeling forced to work when they had covid, potentially passing the illness on. Lack of access to sick pay is a public health issue, and this new law will ensure that low-paid workers no longer have to choose between not being paid and going to work sick. It will also give disabled workers time off to recover from illness rather than struggling into work., becoming sicker, and potentially falling out of employment for the long term. Being paid to take a few days off to recover could save them, and the economy, a lifetime of being left on the scrapheap.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Family Businesses · Hansard source

  More

  I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Unusually, I welcome the motion tabled by the Conservatives because it sets down on the record, loud and clear, that they are no friends of working people, and they are no friends of working women in particular. Their motion calls for an end to Labour’s groundbreaking Employment Rights Bill and would allow bad employers to continue to exploit workers, to sack anyone who objects and to continue paying women less than men. That is not a surprise, of course, because the Leader of the Opposition has already made it clear that she thinks maternity pay has “gone too far” and is “excessive”. Statutory maternity pay is based on earnings, and for most of the leave period it is set at a maximum of £184 a week or 90% of normal pay, whichever is lower. That translates to about £9,500 a year. I do not think many women, or their partners, would think that is excessive. I am at least grateful that the Conservatives are being honest: they could not care less about working people. Earlier, the shadow Chancellor was unable to tell us which bit of the Employment Rights Bill they wanted to get rid of. Well, he should read his own motion—it is written in black and white. Their motion explicitly objects to Labour’s new law to finally make employers put a stop to sexual harassment in the workplace and to take all reasonable steps to stop sexual harassment of staff by customers, contractors and service users. The Conservatives seem to be especially against that in their motion, which is peculiar, because just two years ago they said that they would bring in exactly the same law. What happened? Oh yes, I know: they abandoned working women, broke their promises and left shop workers, office staff and women managers at the mercy of sexual harassers, and they want to do the same today. The other new law in Labour’s Employment Rights Bill that the Conservatives seem to be especially against—it is in their motion, which the shadow Chancellor has not read—is the ending of exploitative zero-hours contracts. Their motion instead supports the continued mistreatment of often low-paid workers who do not know from one week to the next how much work they will get or if they will be able to pay their bills. Let us be clear: sexual harassment can often go hand in hand with exploitative zero-hours contracts. Imagine how difficult it is for a low-paid woman to complain about her manager’s inappropriate sexual behaviour if she relies on him to give her enough hours to feed her family next week. Zero-hours contracts put way too much power in the hands of managers, and, with proper business planning, there is simply no need for them to be forced on workers. In their motion, the Conservatives seem to have confused knowing what people’s hours are in advance with the new right of flexible working, which Labour is also introducing. They claim that those two things are in conflict—of course they are not. People can still have a zero-hours contract if they want to, but if they want guaranteed hours so that they have a secure income for their family, they will be entitled to that. If people want to work part time because they have kids or elderly parents, they will have a new right to flexible working that will allow that. The Conservatives’ motion is not clear on whether they support flexible working, but surely the Leader of the Opposition should understand and embrace Labour’s new right to flexible working, given her reported invention of Kemi mean time, or KMT, to explain being half an hour late for everything. Maybe it is one law for her and another for the workers. In this motion, the Conservatives have squarely and unashamedly set themselves against working people, especially working women, but the British people made a choice on 4 July: they voted for a party that would stand up for working people and keep its promises to outlaw sexual harassment at work and end exploitative zero-hours contracts. That is why Labour will vigorously and vociferously vote down the Conservatives’ attempt to stop those changes today.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Elective Care Waiting Times · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), to her place. Hundreds of my constituents are on waiting lists for knee and hip operations, and while the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) says that she would like to see those waiting lists reduced, the Green party has done everything it can to oppose Labour’s plan for change—it opposed our Budget, with its record investment in the NHS, and it opposed our agreement with the independent sector to bring down the backlog. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is time for the Opposition parties to stop wishing for a reduction in waiting lists and start backing Labour’s credible plan to make a real difference?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Environmental Protection · Hansard source

  More

  As chair of the Tidy Britain all-party parliamentary group, I want to thank you for allowing me to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. The APPG and Keep Britain Tidy have worked on this issue for years, including under the chairship of my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). It is exciting to finally see change being delivered in today’s regulations, and I congratulate the Minister on her speedy and no-nonsense approach to making this happen. I frequently visit local schools and when I ask the children what they would like to see changed in Ealing Southall, they always say they want less litter on the streets. Adults complain about litter all the time, of course, but I had not realised how much children were disturbed by it. Litter makes places feel unloved and it makes the people who live in those places feel unloved too. It makes it embarrassing to ask friends around to your house, and it is a daily reminder that your street and your family just do not matter. Over the last 14 years, the amount of litter on our streets has gone up by a third: a tsunami of litter created by the previous Conservative Government, who slashed the funding for local councils to the bone. Councils such as my own in Ealing were left having to spend about two thirds of their budget on adult and children’s social care, with very little left for anything else. They had to make impossible decisions: spend money on potholes or libraries; on playgrounds or parking; on street sweepers or youth workers. They were left to rely on local volunteer litter pickers such as LAGER Can in Ealing, who do an amazing job, but they cannot do it alone. It is great that this new Labour Government have increased funding for local councils, and I am confident that the Chancellor’s spending review in the spring will allow councils to plan services better, but let us be honest that picking up litter after people is a total waste of money. That money could be much better spent on more playgrounds or youth clubs. The real solution is to stop the litter in the first place. What if people were rewarded for recycling their litter instead of dropping it on the street? What if they got money back? That is exactly what this Labour Government are doing today. We are making recycling pay. These new rules mean that shops across the country will be fitted out with reverse vending machines that give people money back for their used plastic bottles and cans. I have tried out the machine in the shop beside my mum’s house in Ireland, and it is simple and easy to use. People feed in their empties, and they get a voucher for their money back. Since being introduced in Ireland in February last year, reverse vending machines have already increased recycling and reduced litter on the streets. Right now, bins in streets, parks and beaches across the UK are chock-full of empty plastic bottles and cans. Think what a difference it would make if all those bottles and cans went back to the shop instead. We would end the problem of overflowing bins on the high street forever. In Ealing, a massive 41% of all reported fly-tips are black sack fly-tips containing household waste such as empty plastic bottles and cans, so making recycling pay would also reduce fly-tipping. The previous Government knew that this made sense as long ago as 2017, but they dithered, delayed and fought among themselves. Today, we have seen a total U-turn, with Conservative Members fighting against their own policy. Again, they prove that they are on the side of the vested interests, the polluters and the litter bugs. Two schools in my constituency came to see me this week, and they said that this makes sense and will reduce litter on the streets. Even the children know that this is the right thing to do. Today we are ending the Conservative record of dither and delay, and their deplorable refusal to do anything about so many communities that feel neglected and uncared for. The only way to get rid of litter on our streets is to stop people dropping it in the first place. This new plan to make recycling pay will help clean up our streets and parks, our rivers and beaches, and put money back in people’s pockets.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Health and Social Care: Winter Update · Hansard source

  More

  I was shocked when a young man came to my last constituency surgery to ask me as his MP to help him get a GP appointment. Morning after morning, he had spent hours queuing on the phone, and he was desperate. If my constituents cannot see a GP, they end up in A&E instead. How is the Secretary of State continuing to work to undo the Conservatives’ abject failure to fix the GP crisis, which is fuelling winter pressure on hospitals?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Playgrounds · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) for securing this important debate. Playgrounds are not just nice things to have. They are vital spaces where children grow, learn and thrive. In densely populated urban constituencies, like Ealing Southall in London, they are often a precious escape from overcrowded homes. But 14 years of Conservative Government have seen playgrounds and public spaces suffer under successive cuts. With councils starved of funding, playgrounds became a luxury that they could barely afford. Budgets for parks were slashed by more than £350 million and the last Labour Government’s multimillion-pound playground programme was cancelled. That led to crumbling playgrounds that were starved of cash, with councils often having to remove equipment that they could not afford to repair, and a 15% drop in the number of adventure playgrounds since 2017. The results have been devastating: there are fewer public playgrounds, and that harms children’s physical and mental health, stifling their potential before it has a chance to bloom.

• 7 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  The last Government treated mental health as a Cinderella service, with my constituents waiting days in A&E to be admitted to hospital mental health wards. The Solace Centre in Ealing Southall provides help and support in the community for those with mental health problems, at a fraction of the cost of a hospital stay. How does the Minister intend to move more mental health services from hospital to the community, and to create more great services like the Solace Centre?

• 6 Jan 2025 · Health and Adult Social Care Reform · Hansard source

  More

  Does the Secretary of State agree that his plan to transform adult social care services has already started with Labour’s Employment Rights Bill ensuring that social care workers will get fair national pay and conditions, and increased access to training and progression? Does he further agree that we will never have a quality social care service in this country if we do not value the people delivering it properly, as this Labour Government intend to do?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Budget · Hansard source

  More

  Does the Secretary of State agree that to ensure sustainable finances, the Northern Ireland Executive need to set out clear steps to reform both the NHS and broader public services?

• 19 Nov 2024 · NHS Hospital Equipment · Hansard source

  More

  Does the Minister agree that the NHS cannot continue to rely on outdated and obsolete equipment? It is ridiculous that GPs still use pagers and hospitals communicate with each other using fax machines. After 14 years of decline under the previous Government, will she commit to bringing our NHS into the 21st century?

• 4 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source

  More

  I congratulate the new Leader of the Opposition on her election. She says that she will be honest about what her party got wrong over the last 14 years, but I listened to her on TV yesterday and all that she would admit was that under her party standards had started to slip. Standards had started to slip? That is the understatement of the decade. Seven million people on NHS waiting lists, taxes at a 70-year high and mortgages shooting up by hundreds of pounds overnight. That is not standards slipping; that is taking a wrecking ball to our public services and our economy. That is why people voted for change. This Labour Budget starts to deliver that change. Instead of austerity, we are choosing investment in public services. Instead of economic chaos, we are choosing growth, and to pay for it—because clearing up the Conservatives’ mess has to be paid for—we are choosing to protect working people’s pay packets, with no increase in national insurance or income tax in working people’s pay packets. In fact, all of the 7,200 people in Ealing Southall who are on the national minimum wage will receive more money in their pay packet because of this Labour Budget. Raising the youth rate to £10 an hour is a great first step towards achieving equality for young workers in Ealing Southall, and hundreds of carers in Ealing Southall will be able to earn more money and still get their allowance. Last month, I visited west Ealing jobcentre, which is the biggest in west London. More than 170 staff work there, but when I asked what help a disabled person could get to go back to work they did not have an answer. As a trade unionist, I represented disabled workers for many years. So many of them wanted to work but were pushed out of their job because there was no support. There are 3 million people off work on a long-term sickness absence. Many would love to work, but the health service is not set up to support them and jobcentres do not have the right tools to help. That is why I welcome this Labour Budget’s investment of £240 million to get Britian working. Many of my constituents in Ealing Southall want a job, but they need help with English and with their CV, and they need mental health support, so the Secretary of State’s plan to bring jobcentres, careers services, skills providers and health services together will make a huge difference. Today’s debate is about working people, but litter and fly-tipping are so important to my residents, and well run councils such as Ealing are facing severe budget pressures. The spring comprehensive spending review is an opportunity to ensure that Ealing has the resources to deliver for residents, from cleaning the streets to social care. Austerity and economic chaos were the choices of the previous Conservative Government. If the Opposition would like to make different choices, this is their chance to put those choices forward. We have heard nothing today. This Labour Government are proudly and purposely choosing growth, choosing investment in public services, and choosing to protect working people’s pay packets.

• 23 Oct 2024 · Rough Sleeping · Hansard source

  More

  Thank you, Sir Christopher, for your excellent chairing of this debate. I also thank the many hon. Members for their contributions. I regret that the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), completely failed to take responsibility for the more than doubling of rough sleeping under the previous Government. He seemed to think it was more important to count rough sleepers than to do anything about them, and he failed to say anything at all about the almost a quarter of a million social homes that were lost under that Government. However, I appreciate his support on looking again at the no recourse to public funds designation and the massive expansion of that, under the previous Government, to 3.3 million people. I thank the Minister very much for her response. I am delighted that the new Government are focusing on social housing, renters’ rights, making work pay, and rebuilding the NHS. I very much appreciate the cross-departmental focus that this Minister is bringing to this issue, and particularly the leadership from the Deputy Prime Minister, who I think will bring the priority we need to rough sleeping. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered the matter of tackling rough sleeping.

• 23 Oct 2024 · Rough Sleeping · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of tackling rough sleeping. It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship today, Sir Christopher. Night after night in Ealing Southall, people bed down in front of the Quality Foods shop, where a canopy offers some shelter from the rain, although it does not offer much protection from the biting cold. They sleep there all night, wrapped up in cardboard and ragged sleeping bags. Up the road in West Ealing, it is the same story. Indeed, data show that on any night in England in 2023 almost 4,000 people slept rough—a 27% increase on the previous year. It is a daily tragedy for homeless people, and of course it is also intimidating for people passing by and it cannot help but make our town centres less attractive for shoppers and businesses. I recently visited Southall community college, which is trying to offer its students a good learning environment, but it says that it is hard to do so when there are people sleeping under the college awnings every night who are still there in the morning. The college has decent people who want to help, but they do not know where to start. Hope for Southall Street Homeless is a fantastic local charity that helps homeless people and those sleeping rough—I recently visited and saw the range of services it offers, from a hot meal to eye tests to a Bollywood movie on a big screen—but voluntary services are straining under the sheer weight of people now sleeping rough. There was a brief respite during covid when the Everyone In programme moved almost all rough sleepers into accommodation, but when the covid crisis was over, the previous Government squandered that opportunity. They refused to learn the lessons and now the numbers are swiftly moving back to the pre-covid record levels of rough sleeping. Some people might think that rough sleeping is something we just cannot fix—a problem that will always be there—but the last Labour Government reduced rough sleeping by more than two thirds in their first term by taking a cross-departmental approach. I really welcome the new Government’s commitment to doing similar. I hope that the Minister will be able to outline the timeline for a strategy on rough sleeping and clarify which Departments are involved in the new interministerial group. Rough sleeping has a number of causes, including a chronic lack of affordable housing. That is not surprising given that the previous Government presided over a net loss of 210,000 affordable homes over the last 10 years. I am delighted that the new Government are investing in 1.5 million new homes, creating a new generation of social homes in particular. Our low-wage economy also reduces the affordability of housing. Up till now, renters could be kicked out without a reason. I very much welcome the new Government’s plan to make work pay, which will ban precarious zero-hours contracts and fire and rehire, and our Renters’ Rights Bill, which will ban section 21 evictions, giving renters more rights. Many of those sleeping rough have mental health problems or substance misuse issues—many have both. They need intensive support, but we know that the NHS is in crisis. The Secretary of State has taken decisive action with a new 10-year plan, but I hope the Minister will ensure that the needs of rough sleepers are taken into account when designing community mental health and addiction services that will help to reduce rough sleeping. Although we are taking steps to reduce rough sleeping by building new housing, improving renters’ rights, making work pay and rebuilding our NHS, it is all being undermined by the previous Government’s broken immigration and asylum system, which literally creates rough sleepers. In Ealing Southall, many of our rough sleepers are single men in their 60s, although they look even older from their time on the streets. They often come from India originally and do not speak much English, despite having lived here for many years. They might have worked in construction or catering and rented a home, but something went wrong in their lives and when they went to look for help to avoid becoming homeless, they discovered that they did not have the correct visa. They get told they have no recourse to public funds—NRPF—and cannot access housing or welfare support. With no housing benefit or universal credit, some of them end up with no option but to sleep on the street. In some ways, their experience is similar to that of those affected by the Windrush scandal; they get asked for piles of evidence that they did not keep, because they never knew there was a problem with their papers. Some 3.3 million people in this country have been told that they have no recourse to public funds. That is a massive increase in the number of people being denied access to basic services. Many have the right to services—they just need help to track down paperwork and to make their case—but in a Catch-22 situation, they are not allowed to access help to prove their status. Rightly, this Government have taken on the staff to start assessing claims to ensure that those without a right to remain in this country are removed, but I hope the Minister will consider what can be done to offer advice and support to those people who have a right to live in this country, so that they do not end up homeless. Many of those with no recourse to public funds status who are sleeping rough have significant health issues, including heart disease and stroke, but they often cannot access the care they need. Local authorities are not aware of their duties under the Care Act 2014, and they worry about spending money illegally. Added to that, of course, local authorities saw their funding decimated under the previous Government, so there is not a lot of money to go around. I hope that the new Government will consider clarifying local authority responsibilities in that regard. Another growing problem is people coming out of the asylum system and ending up on the streets. The new Government have finally got the system working again after the costly and ineffective gimmicks of the previous Government. Ironically, however, people who are assessed as refugees with the right to asylum in this country are being given no chance to make a life here. Under the previous Government, people granted refugee status were getting as little as seven days’ notice to leave asylum accommodation—eventually changed to 28—but that is still far too short a time, especially as the local housing duty does not kick in for 56 days. I hope that the Government will give consideration to whether it would be sensible to align those timeframes better, whether local authorities can be notified in advance, and whether improved support can be put in place, so that we end the frankly ludicrous situation in which we agree that people are refugees and have a right to be here but turn them out on to the streets. In Ealing Southall, we also have a significant number of EU nationals sleeping on the streets. For reasons that can include chaotic lives or mental health issues, they may not have submitted their settled status paperwork on time; and now they are stuck in limbo. It is easy to say that they could go home but, as an immigrant myself, I understand how hard it might be to admit that the streets of London were not paved with gold—that they failed to make it. I hope that the Minister will look at simplifying the EU settlement system, offering more advice and support, and a better assisted voluntary return system for those who would consider going home. A further issue to bring to the Minister’s attention is the chilling impact of the previous Government’s right-to-rent legislation, which has meant landlords wrongly think they need to see a passport before they can rent to someone. Many people born and bred in this country do not have a passport, and the policy is only legitimising discrimination, so I hope that the Minister will consider the impact it is having on homelessness. I am afraid it is not just the asylum and immigration system that is adding to the numbers of those sleeping on our streets; 15% of prisoners were released into homelessness in 2023, and 4,100 people were released from hospital on to the streets. Money always helps, and I look forward to the Government making provision for tackling rough sleeping in next week’s Budget, but we can make a huge difference to rough sleeping just by stopping policies that create homelessness in the first place. We all want to end rough sleeping, and the new Government’s focus on building affordable homes, making work pay, rebuilding the NHS and strengthening renters’ rights will have an impact, but we will never solve the problem if the previous Government’s immigration and asylum system continues to be allowed to cause homelessness and rough sleeping. The system we inherited is creating destitution by its very design. Not only is that morally wrong; it is a false economy. It just creates a bigger problem that costs us more to fix through acute services, and it is impacting on our town centres. The new Government have made rough sleeping a priority and committed to a cross-departmental approach. I hope that the Minister will work with her colleagues in the Home Office, and in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that those making up their bed on the street tonight will not have to wait much longer for help to rebuild their lives.

• 16 Oct 2024 · Access to Primary Healthcare · Hansard source

  More

  There is an old Irish saying, “Your health is your wealth”, and all the money in the world and all the nice things mean nothing if we do not have our health. Too many people in my constituency do not have good health—10% have diabetes, which is higher than the London and UK average, and the rate of preventable deaths is almost 14% higher than the England average. Time and again when I knock on doors across Ealing Southall, people tell me three things: they cannot get a GP appointment when they need it; they cannot see a doctor face to face; and if they are lucky enough to see a doctor, they never see the same one twice. With long-term conditions such as diabetes, not seeing the same doctor is damaging the health of my constituents. They are getting sicker, and they end up relying more on expensive hospital services. In Southall, emergency hospital admissions are 47% higher than the England average. Why can’t my constituents get to see a doctor? For starters, there simply aren’t enough. North-west London has a ratio of one GP for every 2,268 patients—a lot worse than the UK average. We have had 14 years of the Conservative party running our NHS, and it is clear that it has run it into the ground. It started with a big-bang approach and the disastrous top-down reorganisation of the NHS. That caused so much damage that even they recognised it in the end, and they had to dismantle many of the changes a few years later, but not before the rot had set in. Since then, their approach has been like moving the deckchairs on the Titanic. All they can come up with is piecemeal tweaks and small pilots that never seem to amount to anything. In the meantime the NHS ship is slowly sinking. Lord Darzi’s independent and honest report found that patients have never been more dissatisfied with the services they receive. I can only take the empty Conservative Benches as proof that they are finally embarrassed about it. We must also ask why Conservative Members have been happy to preside over 14 years of decline in our NHS. Is it because they want it to fail, or to replace our NHS with a privatised American-style insurance system? The mask slipped during covid when they fast-tracked their private healthcare mates and handed them multimillion pound contracts for often dodgy personal protective equipment. Was that the future they have in mind for the NHS? That is not what the public wanted, and it is why the public voted them out. My constituents in Ealing Southall are already impressed by the new Government’s approach. They know that the damage to the NHS is so deep that it cannot be fixed overnight. Your health is indeed your wealth, Madam Deputy Speaker. The last Government frittered away that wealth, gave it to their private healthcare mates, and squandered it on damaging and costly reorganisations. This new Labour Government will turn the page on over a decade of Tory decay and help us all to live longer, healthier lives.

• 29 Jul 2024 · Public Spending: Inheritance · Hansard source

  More

  While the headline figures that the Chancellor has revealed are astonishing from an economic perspective, does she agree that it is important to remember the impact of Conservative mismanagement on our public services, our NHS, our education system and our national security? Indeed, how can the Conservatives be trusted to run our economy or our public services ever again?