MY WEEKLY UPDATE

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Dear John,

This week saw Parliament return to business as usual with in-person voting
after the last 18 months of remote working through the pandemic. It was
fantastic to meet with colleagues and more urgently, have the clear
opportunity to look across the commons, hold this Government to account on
a face-to-face basis and really press them for the answers we’ve been
calling for around so many issues including, actions taken on Afghanistan,
their plans for social care and activity with Universal Credit.

WHY I VOTED AGAINST THE UNFAIR TAX TO WORKERS

This week one of the most urgent issues our country faces was debated in
parliament: social care reform. I voted against Conservative moves to make
lower income working families pay for the Government’s failure to address
the cuts and underfunding to the NHS and for the social care crisis.

Not only does this jobs tax represent the biggest rise in taxes on families
for over 50 years but as a former care worker myself, I can say with
first-hand knowledge that the Conservative plan will not address the social
care crisis it has been designed to tackle. Instead, it will simply place
an enormous burden on hard working people.

The Conservative plan does:
- Nothing to balance out the £8bn in cuts over the last decade that their
successive Governments took from the sector, and which has caused social
care to reach this crisis point.
- Nothing to help the more than 1.5million people who need care yet, are
ineligible for support.
- Nothing to address the growing 100,000 vacancies in care which is a
profession that is supremely undervalued when compared to others. Often it
is seen as women’s work who are left to cope by themselves.
- Nor is there anything that will prevent those who need care, from having
to sell their homes in order to pay for it.

The pandemic has also entrenched misconceptions about social care. It is
often thought that care is only about older people, when in reality, a
third of the users and half of the budget for social care is for working
age adults with disabilities. People believe that care is about care homes,
when there are 11.5 million at home carers.

I fully support the principles of the reforms my colleague, Liz Kendall MP,
set out earlier this year, including the steps to ensure more people get
care and support in their own homes and those undervalued care workers are
paid a real living wage.

Under a Labour government, taxes that pay for social care should be fair
across the generations and all forms of income. Those with the broadest
shoulders should pay more – not working families now set for an unfair
tax rise.

I’m immensely proud that Labour has started to set out our ambitious
plans and has offered to work with the Government to fix this crisis –
but the lack of any real plan and taxing working families and businesses is
just not the way to do it.

VOTER ID SUPPRESSION HAPPENING IN THE WEST MIDLANDS

Earlier this week there was a vote in Parliament on the mandatory voter ID
scheme which the Government is looking to introduce. I am wholeheartedly
against this new scheme and do not support the Elections Bill. It will
suppress votes and cost millions.

While on the surface, it seems like a good policy, the reality means
everyone has to have photo ID. In the West Midlands alone, over 150,000
people do not have a passport and even fewer people have a driver's
licence. Nationally, this accounts for more than 3.5 million people who
would become ineligible.

These new measures which the Government wish to introduce will politically
silence more than a fifth of people in the West Midlands and is a dangerous
precedent to set against our democratic rights. It will see the elderly,
low income and Black, Asian and ethnic minority voters all at risk of
losing their right to vote without photo ID.

For those that wish to vote and need to get ID, it will mean that they will
have to pay either £85 for a passport or £43 for a driver’s licence. No
one should have to pay to be eligible to vote. That is not British
democracy.

Moreover, voter fraud is not an issue that needs addressing in this way. At
the last general election in Birmingham there were zero cases of voter
fraud. Nationally, of the 59 million votes cast, which was considered a
high turnout, 1 case of voter fraud was found to have taken place.

To enforce this voter ID scheme, it will cost the Government £120 million
over ten years. It seems unbelievable to start paying millions for every
election, at a time when the Government can’t seem to find the money to
give our nurses a pay rise or fund services to tackle actual crime.

Practically, this Elections Bill means millions of voters will either have
their democratic right to vote taken away or be forced to pay up for photo
ID all for a scheme which isn’t needed in the first place.

By imposing these measures, the Conservatives are reversing decades of
democratic progress and they urgently need to rethink this pointless
policy.

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CATCH ME ON CENTRAL LOBBY TONIGHT

You can catch me taking part in ITV’s Central Lobby tonight at 10.45pm.
As the Labour representative, I will be joining fellow guests, Conservative
MP Alberto Costa and Liberal Democrat Michael Mullaney, Opposition Leader
of Leicestershire County Council, to answer questions on the Midlands’
response to the Afghanistan refugee crisis and the evolving debate around
social care reform and our NHS.

WATCH HERE

© 2020 Printed from an email sent by Preet Kaur Gill. Promoted by A.J Webb
on behalf of Preet Kaur Gill, both at 56 Wentworth Road, B17 9TA.
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