Working people across the country are taking a battering

By Lisa Nandy MP / @lisanandy

This week parliament came to life for the first time since I was elected in May. It started on Tuesday when the TUC held a mass lobby to protest against the cuts that were to come. I made my way into Central Lobby to find an NASUWT activist and former teacher from Wigan, to be greeted by a scene straight out of the 19th Century portraits of parliament. MPs were perching on window sills, benches or crouching on the floor surrounded by scores of energetic trade unionists. I spotted one or two Tories but most were nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile their Liberal colleagues were getting a particularly hard time. I passed one group of activists who were busy telling their Lib Dem MP: ‘It’s not what you say, it’s what you do. How are you going to vote?’.

Later in the day, I met with two UCATT construction workers from Wigan who had lost their jobs after our new schools were cancelled. Their story was a heavy dose of reality and in stark contrast to the bizarre mood in the chamber the following day when we gathered to hear George Osborne’s statement. That the Tories were excited wasn’t surprising in itself. But I was taken aback to see the level of glee with which their members, particularly the newer ones, greeted the announcements on welfare reform. At one point the speaker had to tell Angie Bray, the new Ealing Central MP, to calm down. The measures they were so delighted about will push people out of their jobs and destroy lives when there are simply no jobs to go to, as I heard so compellingly from construction workers the previous day.

That afternoon I squeezed into a packed committee room to listen to children in care questioning Tim Loughton, the children’s minister. He gave a long speech explaining carefully how much he wanted to help them – unfortunately not quite good enough for a group of children who have been let down by successive governments over several generations. One young girl told him her mother had been in care before her and her baby daughter was now with foster parents. Another girl cried as she told the minister she was about to leave care and would never see her sister again as she didn’t know where she was. ‘What are you actually going to do?’ they wanted to know.

I don’t blame him for not knowing. He’s a new minister and it’s a difficult set of problems. But I do blame him for the fact that earlier that day he sat back in support while his party hammered those children and the local authorities responsible for their care. By de-ringfencing grants and slashing local authority budgets by a minimum of 30% over four years they have not only ensured future generations of children are consigned to the same pathetic standard of treatment – they have taken away any sense of hope for this one.

I ended the week sitting in the chamber in support of John McDonnell’s bill to restore the right to strike in the UK. Having seen democracy in action twice throughout the week I was horrified to see the level of contempt for it in the commons. The bill has strong support on Labour benches, is supported by the Greens and even a handful of the coalition back it in defiance of their frontbench. But instead of allowing a vote the Tories attempted to talk it out, meaning that many MPs, including myself, were forced to leave due to constituency commitments before we knew if there was to be a vote. Even worse, David Nuttall, the hapless new Tory MP for Bury North who was put up to do the whips’ bidding, clearly hadn’t even read it. He had to be told twice by the Speaker to address the topic under discussion while he rambled on for an hour about his brother, his job and his inane reflections on life.

Meanwhile, working people across the country are taking a battering from his government and he and his colleagues simply could not care less.