Kimberley MP reflects on first year of Labour being back in power
Last weekend was exactly one year on from the general election which brought Labour back into Government.
It was an honour to be re-elected early the following morning, and it has been a privilege to serve in this Government.
To mark the occasion, I’d like to take this column as an opportunity to look back on what Labour have delivered in the last year.
We’ve made some big impacts already with measures that will help everyone with the cost of living.
In April we raised the minimum wage, making 14,400 workers in Nottingham up to £1,400 per year better off.
Pensions increased too, with 12 millions pensions in line to benefit by £470 each – that’s on top of an extra £116 per month to 294 former mineworkers in Nottingham North and Kimberley after we ended the injustice of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme.
There was support for parents too, as we began rolling out new free breakfast clubs across the country, with two in this constituency.
We made sure that the cost of lunch was being covered for more children as well, with a huge expansion in free school meals – saving the parents of up to 9,000 children in Nottingham North and Kimberley £500 per year.
There has been a big push as well to give people better rights at work and at home.
The Employment Rights Bill, now making its way through the House of Lords will end the scandal of 'fire and rehire' and give workers rights to parental leave from day one.
Meanwhile the Renters’ Rights Bill, also going through the Lords right now, will end discrimination against renters with children or on benefits, limit the amount that can charge up front and end bidding wars for new lets.
We know that for lots of people the NHS is front of their mind when they decide to put their cross in the box for Labour, so there’s been a huge amount of work towards getting it back on its feet after years of mismanagement.
The signs of that recovery are starting to show - four million extra appointments across the country and 1,900 more GPs.
Ambulance waiting times are down as well, and there’s new high-tech radiotherapy machines coming for Nottingham University Hospitals.
Within the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the department where I am a minister, we have introduced trials of High Street Rental Auctions, to tackle vacant shop premises and breath life back int our town centres.
I’m also leading on our Plan for Neighbourhoods, which is giving 350 communities all across the country funding which they can use for what they decide is important to their area.
I’ve been working on the response to the Grenfell Inquiry as well, with the government taking forward all 58 recommendations.
This is only a few highlights from the first year of this term.
No-one would deny that there is still plenty of work for us to be getting on with and we’re determined to make the absolute most of the opportunity that we have been given to help rebuild Britain.