Graham Jones

Hyndburn MP

BREXIT, Brexit, Brexit. It just won’t go away, but it never was going to.

As I write this the Irish and British are doing the tango trying to conclude ‘The Nightmare on Brexit Street: The Bitter Divorce’.

Should it be concluded, then we move to the five-year sequel (or longer). ‘Nightmare on Brexit Street 2; The Painful Trade Negotiations’. Please save me, someone.

The public are going to feel cheated when they see Brexit dominating their TV for the next five years.

And Westminster’s Boris Johnson government is about to add insult to injury.

When he promises new NHS money, it comes on the back of his government closing our NHS walk-incentre. There is no £360m for local NHS services. The red bus broke down.

The latest deprivation figures are out. After 10 years of a Tory government and deep austerity inflicted on this area, we see that East Lancashire is officially now the poorest sub-region in the country.

I am seeing a steady stream of needy and desperate people come through my advice surgeries. It’s heartbreaking. We need to do more and certainly on housing where I constantly badger Hyndburn council.

Since I last wrote, the government has rowed back from funding the train extension which will connect East Lancashire with so many new destinations across the Pennines, including better connectivity to the ports.

Add to that the government are also rowing back in investing in the M65 extension to the M1, suggesting a series of road improvements may suffice. I will be there in Parliament campaigning for full investment.

A Labour government, unlike the Conservatives, is committed not only to the train line electrified, but significant investment in our region.

A new green deal, regional banks, employment protections and higher standards for the public in the face of corporate greed including housing. A Labour government will transform East Lancashire.

On a brighter note, I was delighted an organisation I started 10 years ago with others, Hyndburn Green Spaces Forum, has won the Queen’s Award.

With that in mind, a similar project I have been agitating for, for a long time has come into being.

Active Hyndburn, which is an amalgam of recreational and sports groups, who like Green Spaces Forum wants to achieve transformational change. They are a great bunch of people.

We are one of the least active boroughs in the country (around 25pc). Let’s try and more than double that figure in a decade.

Nothing should drive us on more than to think about the health and wellbeing of a grandad who lives to enjoy an extra ten years with his grandchildren — a wonderful thought.