Dear Constituent,

This week, the Shadow Cabinet exchanged our usual stuffy room in Parliament for the wonderful surroundings of the Lowry in Salford. It wasn’t just the convenience (for me at least!) of taking a short tram ride that made Salford a perfect location – part of the reason that we were in Greater Manchester was because we wanted to draw attention to the regional inequality that blights our country.

 

As Jeremy Corbyn pointed out in his speech at Media City, the UK has the worst regional inequality in the whole of Europe, with most of the wealth (and most of the funding) staying stubbornly down in London and the South East to the detriment of those of us in Tameside and the rest of the North West. For instance, transport funding in London is currently £1,023 per head compared to just £422 in the North. That means that for every pound spent on Northern transport, £2.42 is spent in London.

 

In addition to receiving more funding, London and the South East are our most prosperous regions, with the average yearly household income in the South East almost £5,000 more than in the North West. And under the Tories this regional inequality is actually widening – not narrowing.

 

It is absolutely critical that this issue is addressed. We need wealth and opportunity to be spread equally across our country and not hoarded in one corner. A major part of the issue is that far too many decisions are made centrally in London rather than locally in our towns, cities and regions. It is perhaps little surprise that decision-makers living in the South East think that more money should be spent where they live, but that certainly doesn’t make it right.

 

In Salford, Jeremy Corbyn laid out a few of the ways in which the next Labour Government will rebalance our economy and spread power and opportunities more evenly across the country – Regional Development Banks, “Crossrail for the North”, properly funded public services, to name a few. If there is to be an election soon (and I think there will be) then I hope that regional inequality is a major theme of the campaign. For all their talk of a Northern Powerhouse, our region has now experienced almost a decade of neglect under the Conservatives.

 

Unfortunately, the new Prime Minister hasn’t shown any evidence of being any more interested in tackling the injustices of regional inequality than either of his predecessors. I think that people in Tameside deserve better.

 

We all remember seeing pictures in our school history books of factories and mills belching out smoke, or Lowry’s matchstick men, cats and dogs striding around beneath countless smoking chimneys. It’s an important part of our industrial heritage, but these scenes have largely been left in the past.

This isn’t the case everywhere. I recently returned from leading a delegation of British MPs to China, and in Beijing and other Chinese cities similar sights can be seen today. People walk through the streets in masks and the smog can be heavy, making it hard to see. It makes you realise how lucky we are to live somewhere where you can breathe easily and where the sky isn’t hidden behind a wall of pollution.

We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security though – air quality remains an issue in our borough (for example, 20 roads in Stockport have illegal levels of air pollution) and it’s a very real threat to our health and wellbeing.

Across the globe, air pollution kills around 7 million people every year. Tragically, this includes around 600,000 children. These deaths aren’t just in those areas where pollution is most visible – far from it. In the UK, it’s estimated that air pollution contributes to around 64,000 deaths every year. In Greater Manchester alone, around 1,200 every year have their lives cut short as a result of the quality of our air.

These shocking figures underline the importance of cleaning up our air, not just to protect the environment but also to protect our friends, families and communities.

Luckily, in Greater Manchester we have Clean Air Greater Manchester – a collaboration between our local authorities, the Combined Authority and Transport for Greater Manchester. Together they are working to clean up the air that we all breathe, developing a new Greater Manchester Clean Air Plan, introducing new tram lines, improving cycling infrastructure and expanding the Electric Vehicle Scheme.

Plans like the proposed Clean Air Zone have attracted some criticism, but it’s clear that we can only reduce pollution levels – and in doing so, save lives – if we take strong direct action.

We also need to protect our green spaces and this is why I’m so passionate about ensuring that the Bredbury Park Industrial Estate doesn’t encroach further on the Tame Valley. Hundreds of residents have marched against the plans and I hope that developers take this on board and think again.

Improving air quality in Stockport won’t be easy but it is something that needs to be done – for all our sakes.