Toby Perkins MP

As my children dress in various ghoulish outfits to frighten the neighbours on the occasion of Halloween, it is tempting to reflect that the recent comprehensive spending review contained many measures that will have given people across Chesterfield cause for sleepless nights.

Britain has a large national debt. This is because we, Labour, were fighting during the global  recession to help people who had played no part in the catastrophic banking collapse to save their jobs, pay their bills and protect their savings.  No country should ignore a deficit. However focusing on cuts rather than growth will fundamentally weaken the level of public services that people in Chesterfield have come to rely on.

Already we are seeing the impact of the cuts with a string of local people who rely on care services from the County Council contacting my office to say that their care has been cut. Meanwhile an independent study says that Chesterfield will be the worst hit area in Derbyshire with around 1,400 public sector jobs to be lost over the next six years.

I’ve been in business ever since leaving school so no-one needs to encourage me that a strong business community is vital to a prosperous economy, but whilst attending a recent CBI ‘Question time’ event in Derby I was struck by how the cuts to our public services and the new immigration policies are hurting the private sector as much as the public sector.

We have been well served by our local public services here. Schools right across Chesterfield are rated highly. The County Council was a beacon of quality services until the political change last May, whilst we enjoy an excellent local hospital and good primary care provision to name a few.  Across the board, I will be fighting to maintain that quality provision in the face of these damaging cuts.

Locally, I still see much to be optimistic about in Chesterfield. I spoke at the planning meeting against the Dunston Incinerator and was absolutely bowled over by the commitment and polite determination of the huge band of objectors who secured a big win for Chesterfield by successfully persuading the planning committee of the folly of the proposal.

Chesterfield FC have been enjoying some big wins of their own, starting the season in fine style and sit proudly at the top of the table. Their new stadium along with other developments there is a start towards a vibrant A61 corridor.

I was also reminded of the essential value of our voluntary services when working at the Barnardos store on Trevorrow Crescent as part of the Voluntary sector’s ‘make a Difference’ day on Saturday and subsequently when attending a meeting of Rethink’s award winning Mental and Spiritual Help (MASH) group.

Meanwhile in Parliament, I have been adapting to my new role as Labour’s shadow Minister for Education.  I am now Labour’s representative on issues like safeguarding children, children in care, Youth services, School Sport and Family Courts. Many of these are targeted for government cuts. I am meeting many hard-working and passionate professionals who fear the impact of these cuts will fall on the deprived communities they have served with such dedication and commitment.

At my weekly surgeries I regularly encounter the real life impact of decisions taken in Whitehall, so I am asking any workers or users of public services to keep me in touch with any significant adverse (or positive) changes to service provision as a result of cost cutting measures.

Parliament closed for three weeks during the party conference season, but returning there this week  it felt like a lifetime.

Following the relative orderly calm of the Lib Dem conference, the Labour leadership contest dominated the airwaves. Reactions and counter reactions were sought by commentators desperate for some good old fashioned in-fighting. The new leader ‘worked’ the conference tirelessly meeting with delegates from across the country and the wider movement, and was quick to assert his desire to unite the party rather than repeat the divisive mistakes of the past.

The leader’s speech is always a Conference highlight but this year, more than normally, the pressure was on. Ed’s speech had something for everyone, from his background introduction to his parents past, fleeing death at the hands of the Nazis, to setting out his pride in Labour’s successes, his contrition over past failures and finally his optimistic vision for Britain on behalf of the new generation of Labour politicians.

The week of Tory Conference was spent back home in Chesterfield. The chaotic and ill thought out announcement of the cuts to child benefit was hotly followed by the plans for huge rises to tuition fees that the Lib Dem party seem willing to support – having opposed all tuition fees only a few months ago.

On Saturday, I attended the protest march against the Dunston incinerator where hundreds of men, women and children joined politicians of every hue and business owners to express their opposition to the plans for the incineration plant. The final decision will be taken on the 19^th October at 1pm at County Hall in Matlock, the public are invited to attend.

Whilst marching with objectors a phone call came through: “Would I be available to take a phone call from Ed Miliband at 130pm?”

 I must admit my thoughts immediately turned to the shadow ministerial team that Ed would be putting together, but it seemed so unlikely that I might be involved just a few months into my parliamentary career. The call when it came was brief. Within five minutes I had been appointed to and accepted a place in the Shadow Education Team.

Two days later at 236pm I stood at the despatch box for the first time. The first member of the 2010 intake to speak from the despatch box. My question was solid if unspectacular – about the importance of recognising the strength of a school’s intake as well as its outputs- but for a guy from Chesterfield, who had left school at 17 and been married in a little two up two down in Birdholme, being able to deliver it on behalf of our schoolchildren, my constituents and all the people who have helped to get me there meant the world to me.

I went to bed on Monday night proud, humble and determined- it’s been quite a few weeks!

The Chancellor’s emergency budget was one of those great House of Commons occasions. The chamber was packed to the rafters, and a full and expectant press gallery eagerly hung on every word. Though it took the Chancellor just an hour to deliver his emergency budget on June 22^nd, the implications of it will be felt by all of us for several years to come.

When I spoke in the Chamber in the budget debate late on Thursday evening, the benches and press gallery may have been considerably less packed, but the arguments on the measures continued to rage.

The Chancellor famously claimed that ‘we were all in it together’ when setting out his stall for the vast cuts, so he and his Liberal Democrat partners must be judged by that measure, and as the full details of the budget have emerged, Chesterfield people may be forgiven for wondering if some of us are taking more of the pain than others.

VAT was acknowledged during the election campaign by politicians of all parties as a tax that hit people in poorer households the hardest, with nearly double the percentage of the poorest people’s income being spent on VAT than the wealthiest.

Cutting Corporation tax for larger companies at the expense of allowances for firms involved in manufacturing will reduce the chance for us to reshape our economy in favour of industry and stimulate growth, and instead lead larger firms to aim for bottom line profits rather than invest in the future. Our Corporation tax was already at its lowest level in the last 20 years.

Measures to increase the tax free threshold, re-link pensions and earnings were welcome, but anyone who works or relies on schools, social services, council housing or any other public services will fear that the huge 25% cuts in these areas will fundamentally alter our country.

I argued that this budget was an anti growth budget that could cut off the recovery, would increase the gap between rich and poor and was unnecessarily savage. To do it in a way that makes the most vulnerable pay most does not suggest that we really are ‘all in it together’.

To travel from Westminster to Chesterfield on Thursday night was to exchange theory for practical, as my weekly surgery brought me face to face again with people and groups on the front line who face the reality of the measures talked about so glibly in London.

I met a man who could barely make it up the stairs who was being told that he was fit to return to work on a building site, a local manufacturing firm worried about the lack of help that British manufacturing was getting and a Chesterfield shop owner who feared the rise in VAT would be the final straw for his firm.

Then on Saturday, dozens of elderly people turned out to protest at their local community rooms being closed in Dunston  and Newbold, and at Galas in Brimington and Old Whittington, I saw the very best of our town in the dozens of voluntary groups showing off their work and raising money to keep going in tough times. People giving their time and their money to support causes they believed in, who could not have been more removed from the greedy bankers who brought the financial crisis to us.

Meeting volunteers from charities, youth groups and clubs at the galas it was impossible to shake the thought that these organisations may well be amongst those hit by the cuts in spending on which they rely.

Their example was inspiring as was the news that the plans for an asbestos transfer station in Old Whittington had been thwarted, a great example of community action defeating corporate interests, now we hope for a similar result on the Dunston incinerator.

So all in all, an exciting, worrying and inspiring week that may be viewed as momentous in historical terms and have implications for people right across society that, as yet, we don’t fully appreciate.

Meanwhile England lost to Germany to bring our World Cup campaign to a disappointing climax- like Tory budgets, some things never change!

Sitting up here in my Chesterfield home, I can hardly believe the way that things have happened for me over the last few days.

The full national impact of the general election that took place on Thursday 6th May 2010 may not be known for many years. But however historians view it, it started for me delivering leaflets with my wife (who was in remarkable good spirits for the time of morning) at 545am on Winster Road in Middlecroft. At 6.55, when I saw a gentleman on Middlecroft Road leave his house to go and queue up outside the polling station, I figured that this might be an election that had captured the public imagination a little more than in recent years. Continue Reading