PPC Profile: Emma Bishton

Full Name: Emma Bishton

Age: 42

From: Nayland, Suffolk (grew up in Somerset)

PPC for: South Suffolk

Selection Result: Unknown

Member of the Labour Party since: 1998

Website: www.emmabishton.wordpress.com (active from 3/3/10)

CV:
I grew up in Somerset, and went to the University of Durham where I studied music. I then studied music therapy at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, following which I moved to Colchester to take up a music therapy post based in an old-style residential institution for people with learning disabilities. I continued in this post for 10 years, during which I was for two years the elected chair of the UK association for music therapists.

For most of my time as a music therapist, I was a trade union representative on the NHS Trust’s joint negotiating committee. As the Trust was very keen to pick up what it saw as the opportunities arising from the new NHS purchaser-provider split in the early 1990s, it set about things like creating its own terms and conditions for employees, which made for a challenging time.

Whilst working as a music therapist I became interested in the wider issues affecting people with learning disabilities and with mental health problems, both conceptually (for example about inclusion) and practically – the very real difficulties that people with disabilites can experience trying to access healthcare, particularly.

Because of this, and the desire to make a difference on a wider scale, I moved into the field of health improvement, working within what is now NHS North East Essex, where our aim was and continues to be about reducing health inequality and helping people live healthier lives.

For the past few years I have been the lead for developing and commissioning drug and alcohol services, and for third sector funding. I’m proud to be part of delivering Labour’s work on public health and on addressing health inequality, even though we still have a long way to go, and I’m really concerned that this is an area that could slip under the radar so easily with a Tory government. The effects of this, were it to happen, would be long-lasting.

In an attempt to ‘practise what I preach’, I took up running a year ago. So far my longest distance is 6 miles, but later this year I am due to run the Dublin marathon with a group of friends. We’re doing it in aid of St Helena Hospice, Colchester, to celebrate the life of a good friend who died in the new year. It’s rather like being a PPC, in that once committed there’s no turning back!

I continue to perform as a singer and instrumental musician when time allows, and am very active in supporting both my local choir and other local events. I volunteer as the ‘eco-parent’ at my children’s school, and also am co-director of the school’s childrens’ choir. I have previously been a school governor (at another school) for six years.

Community involvement is very important to me; the more we participate, the more we benefit. In the last year we formed a Transition group in my village, which I am very involved with. The Transition Movement acts as a vehicle for sustainable change – change which is both environmentally driven and raises social capital, localised so that it draws on the strengths and identity of each community and promotes positive change at an individual and localised level. I am really keen to see how far this movement can progress; if grassroots movements like this can meet top-down reform and action by government on the environment, then we may really get somewhere and limit the impact of climate change both here and in the developing world.

I was inspired to go into politics because:
I didn’t grow up in a politically active household, but in an area where Conservatism seemed to be the expected norm. I instinctively reacted against this, but it wasn’t until later, when I was a student, that I began to understand so much more of what the Labour Party was about. I went to university in Durham, where, in the mid-1980s, inequality was all too clear. This made the link for me about how as a society we need meaningful and effective policy to make a real and positive difference to people’s lives. For me only Labour has the breadth of understanding and the policies to actually make the difference our society needs.

My main policy interests are:
Health policy; the environment and food production; and sustainable development.

Three things I would like to see in the Labour manifesto are:
1 – Clear and achievable targets around developing more renewable energy and the creation of ‘green’ jobs, and tangible measures to help increase local food and energy production.

2 – Legislation to set a minimum price per unit of alcohol and to reduce the drink drive limit – acting upon the evidence that this will help reduce alcohol-related harm.

3 – A commitment to increase affordable housing: too many communities are already under threat due to unaffordable house prices.

I think people should vote for me because:
I want to serve my community. I live in my constituency, and I value what happens here and to the people, towns and villages nearby, as well as in the world beyond. I also think parliament needs MPs from a broad range of backgrounds, and that my commitment to the public service ethos and understanding of how to turn policy into services make me a good candidate.