End of term

By Lisa Nandy MP / @lisanandy

There’s a definite end of term feel to parliament this week. We don’t officially rise until Tuesday but the last late night sitting was this week and people are starting to drift off back to their constituencies.

Just like at school, everyone is ill. On Tuesday Michael Gove appeared in front of my select committee to discuss the spending review and education white paper. Most of the committee – myself included – were on the verge of passing out and spent most of the time coughing and spluttering at him. Despite the best efforts of our chairman, he probably left feeling he’d got lucky to have such an ill group of scrutineers – on the other hand he’s most likely now nursing the first signs of the flu.

It’s been quite a year all round: the end of the New Labour era, coalition politics, the biggest spending cuts in living memory, students and trade unions taking to the streets – and most likely more unrest to come next year.

So much of this year has been negative – it feels that we are on the brink of returning to the divisive and angry politics of the 1980s. The EDL seem to be on the rise and my surgery is full of people worried – or losing – jobs, homes and services. Next year there will be much to do but for now I thought I would try to pick out some of the positives from this year.

On a personal note, getting elected to a job that gives me contact with the widest range of people and a platform to give them a voice has to be top of the list, although finally persuading the door staff that I’m allowed into the tea room is up there (I was stopped outside the chamber a couple of weeks ago – clearly I will have to claim my place in parliament room by room).

I’ve enjoyed teaming up with other MPs to fight causes that matter. Teresa Pearce and I have been battling with colleagues from all sides of the house to save the Education Maintenance Allowance – which couldn’t be more important to young people in our very different constituencies. On Wednesday we were joined in Teresa’s Westminster Hall debate by an astonishing number of Labour, Liberal and Tory MPs urging ministers to think again.

I’ve also found an ally in Edward Timpson with whom – despite our political differences – I share a passion to improve the chances for children in care. I look forward to pressing all political parties to line up behind our report on the subject when we launch it in March. It was inspiring to march with the students who peacefully but forcefully took to the streets in support of future generations of young people this year. Much has been made of apathy amongst young people – after marching alongside them and addressing their rally I am clear those fears aren’t justified.

My hope for next year is that public pressure brings results – on tuition fees, the EMA, Aim Higher, school sports, NHS reform, free schools, housing benefit – to name just a few. I also hope the election of Ed Miliband as Labour Leader signals the start of a return to the kind of politics that founded the Labour Party: open, democratic and forged by and rooted in a broad, inclusive grassroots movement outside the Westminster bubble. Now that would be quite a year.