Dear Esther McVey MP
Today (28 Nov), I returned home to find that a copy of the Winter 2024 "Tatton Matters" (News from Esther McVey MP), had been put through my letter box. It's the second correspondence I've received from Esther in the last two months. I thought about contacting her after receiving the first, but decided not to, so just put it in the recycling bin after reading it. In the second correspondence she specifically says "Tell Esther what matters to you." So I will.
She states that the new Labour government has been "releasing thousands of prisoners early onto the streets of this country. However, she fails to mention why. This was addressed by Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood who stated..."if we fail to act now, we face the collapse of the criminal justice system. And a total breakdown of law and order."
On the same government web page, National Police Chiefs' Council Chair Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, said: "It is pleasing to see the new government has taken action on this pressing issue so quickly."
She fails to acknowledge that the Conservative party had been in government for more than nine years before the prisoner early release scheme was implemented. Clearly the problem of a lack of prison cells was due to the failure of the last two Conservative governments and not the current Labour one. The Conservative party always claims to be the party of law and order. How it can claim this is a mistry to me.
She also states that she has: "criticised the time taken for children with special educational needs and disabilities to access care and educational plans". She correctly states that "the last Conservative government put record levels of investment into SEND provision." But my question is, was it really enough? Well, the honest answer is "probably not" according to Professor Laura Crane (Professor of Autism Studies, University of Birmingham)
And finally, she fails to mention all the hard work of her constituency office workers and seems to take all the credit of their work for herself. I hope that she will rectify this omission in her next edition of "Tatton Matters". Only time will tell.
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
I don’t agree with everything Labour have done but I believe they are trying to restore this country and our economy from the disaster of the last 14 years and should be given longer than 4 months to turn things around.
A bit more tactical voting would have done it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0025m9k/politics-live-04122024
In order to reorganise this country effectively we need real devolved power to districts and regions. The costs of delivering infrastructure, by which I mean schools, transport, raw materials, energy, water, health, police and so on, has to not be subsidised by the state (taxpayers). We've seen a few things going on in Wilmslow recently - a masterplan for a development by Bellway and replacing Travis Perkins with care accommodation. In such instances developers must fully fund infrastructure that supports their developments.
Coordinating all of this should be a larger more regulated state otherwise what we will end up returning to is the chaos of the last 45 years - and that includes the brief Blair period - where UKGrim becomes this continued end game of managed UK decline. Evidence of which by the way is all over if we look hard enough.