What next for New Labour?

By Stella Creasy

Much as we wish otherwise, the pace of social change can be agonising slow. Consequently in the daily free for all of contemporary politics, it can be hard to talk about how different Britain is since 1997 without sounding like Vicky Pollard. Yeah but I want the minimum wage to be higher too, no but it didn’t exist at all ten years ago, yeah but give us credit for introducing it. Yeah but I want prescription charges abolished too, no but under Major there weren’t any subsidies at all, yeah but free cancer drugs are a starting point.

A demanding and testing public is the bread and butter of being a PPC and I’m always grateful for the opportunity such debates offer to learn from other people’s experiences. And often their concerns are as much an indication of our successes and future challenges as they are criticisms. As a school governor and a voluntary youth worker I regularly field complaints about snags in new buildings or problems claiming tax credits or how to use childcare vouchers and employer contributions. These are parents, teachers and even kids asking questions, making demands – and yes getting angry – about resources that fifteen years ago would have been dismissed as some Swedish oddity, impossible to provide in a British welfare state.

That new parents now take for granted these services is testament to just how much we’ve achieved. No longer are we arguing for early years programmes we could offer, but instead being pushed on how we should expand and improve something valued and defended by the public themselves. Spend time with people using these facilities and you can see how and why cuts in them would be not only morally unjust, but also electorally suicidal. Yet whilst the Lib Dems and Tories tinker with these services at their peril, our challenge is to defend and to advance the pace of progressive change.

To do this requires us to illustrate how our record in office reflects not only what we’re capable of over time but shapes our plan for what is to come next. We may have won the case for public investment in early year’s provision, but that was just round one. And the fight only becomes tougher in times of economic uncertainty. We have to show the technicalities of service delivery and the hazards of global markets have not blunted our mission to make Britain a more socially just society – or recognition of the next steps that move us towards that goal.

To end child poverty once and for all our next priority should be to merge the myriad of child benefit and tax credit schemes, and in the process broaden their coverage to lift more families permanently off low incomes. Tackling the persistent inequality facing families in Walthamstow and across the capital means including the cost of living in London in the allowances we give for childcare. In the longer term we have to work towards funding more free nursery places and expanding workplace childcare incentives, as well as helping families use paternity and maternity leave in a way that works for all concerned.

We also have to prove we understand, and can address, the new challenges our policies create. That means acting for the Surestart generation; the kids who have had the start in life the early years provision we have created so far offers. We need to be able to carry this investment on until adulthood by giving every young person the right mix of good schooling, structured activities and emotional and financial support they need to get through their teen years and come out the other side a success. And, as we have done with early years, in a way that means services can be tailored to their individual circumstances – whether using resources within the public, private or voluntary sector.

Learning from our past as we put forward plans for the future doesn’t mean pretending the present isn’t happening. Investing in supporting children and young people isn’t incidental to our economic fortunes, but integral. In a recession these services offer families vital help during times of personal and financial difficulty. Longer term they are the best social insurance scheme we can buy to make sure our future workforce have the skills, confidence and motivation to compete favourably in the global market.

To think in this way doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take pride in previous successes, but that we should also ask how we learn from them. Had we never won in 1997, Surestart would have remained just a nice idea. It is because of the difference it makes we can move onto developing a “wrap around” offer for youth services. Being in Government has taught us how to turn policy ambition into practical actuality. Being Labour means we look at today’s kids with a passion for social justice that doesn’t stop with the child tax credit system, but is instead built upon it.

These principles apply whatever the political weather. Whether dealing with climate change, international development or financial regulation, let us focus on responding to and rallying others for the next set of progressive challenges Britain faces, whether of our own making or not. So that yeah, but no but yeah – we really are worth voting for.