Graham Jones

WITH a tiring General Election out of the way, I have been back out on the doorstep speaking to residents. Views haven’t changed much. When asked about the GE 2017 outcome and national picture, people’s response is by and large ‘it is what it is’?

For me, it is about transport and infrastructure, greater personal responsibility and helping people improve their lives with better education, skills and training.

It is refreshing to see Labour once again put skills and training at the centre of issues facing this country. I have long called for some form of National Education Service similar to the National Health Service. With a fast-changing economy, people aged 40 (or any age) shouldn’t be thrown on the scrap heap because they have a mortgage, children or other barriers preventing them retraining. Training and job longevity (security) are vital to our economy.

Labour has always been the party of education. From Wilson’s polytechnics and the Open University in the 1960s to Blair’s massive investment in early years, in primary and secondary school rebuilding programmes, in smaller class sizes and teaching assistants, in investment in further education. I am pleased that in the few weeks back, the government are rowing back on school cuts – an issue I raised with the Prime Minister. Every school in Hyndburn was facing a huge budget cut.

I continue to raise the issue of better transport in Parliament, particularly the M65 extension to Yorkshire, an idea that is now starting to reach the very highest levels of government.

I have been elected to the prestigious Parliamentary Committee. The important Executive Committee of Labour MPs which meets weekly with Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson. I have also been elected by Labour MPs to go on the important Defence Select Committee. I re-joined numerous All Party Groups. I wish I could join more as there are many varied and worthy causes but alas the scale of Parliamentary activity does not allow it.

I was approached about joining Jeremy Corbyn’s front bench but I stand by my principles that if you cannot support the leader 100 per cent of the time, you should not be on his front-bench team. With the fall of Mosul and all its revealing barbaric horrors, it was reasonable to vote for air strikes and I cannot see Jeremy and I holding a consistent foreign policy view. I also support the UN position on Yemen, as do the UK courts following their in-depth inquiry.

I am not a rebel by nature and my regular voting record is one of considered loyalty having never voted against the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn (the air strikes vote was a free vote) or any other leader, and having abstained only on a handful of occasions – immigration is a major issue.

I cited immigration as another divergent issue. However, I was immensely pleased that Jeremy Corbyn came out in support of a view I hold that cheap foreign labour undercuts UK wages. Some described this as Jeremy pandering to UKIP. I find it regrettable that so-called progressives hold such a myopic view and openly support the model of filling jobs with cheap, non-unionised eastern European workers on terrible pay and conditions. Workers are only required in the overheating south because the north has been starved of investment and because the lowering of wages is not an incentive to move south.

Finally, it is the view of many that this will be a 3-5 year parliament with the Conservatives having a decent coalition majority. The only caveat I would add to that is as Macmillan said: “Events, my dear boy, events”.