Labour Attacks Government On Families
Labour candidate Debbie Abrahams and Shadow Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper at Friezland School yesterday.
Labour has criticised the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for scaling back child benefit, child tax credits and the child trust fund. On a visit to Friezland School yesterday, party spokeswoman on children and families Yvette Cooper, described those decisions as “unfair.”
Ms Cooper, who is also the Shadow Foreign Secretary, joined Labour candidate Debbie Abrahams in facing a question and answer session from pupils who have been taking part in their own mock election.
They certainly didn’t give the politicians an easy ride, as they were asked about issues ranging from the welfare state to what the Houses of Parliament are like.
Ms Cooper also faced a question on the Phil Woolas scandal, and she responded by telling the youngsters that our now-disgraced former MP was “a friend” and said he’d done a lot of good work in the area over the years.
Later, Ms Cooper spoke to Saddleworth News, and said she’d been very impressed by the quality of the questions the pupils, from Lisa Carter’s class, had put to her. She said: “There was such a full range of questions as well, from talking about different promises, to environmental policy, to somebody talking about the (Tesco) Greenfield development.”
She went on to say the changes to the various forms of family payments would cost parents across the borough of Oldham up to £10m: “It’s the kind of support that I think Oldham families really need to get on to cope with the fact that it can be really expensive, it can be a real pressure looking after kids. But it’s also really important to give our children the support they need.”
Debbie Abrahams and Yvette Cooper with class teacher Lisa Carter at Friezland School yesterday.
Ms Cooper continued: “The fact that the government is taking more from children than it is from the banks is a really unfair decision, and the wrong one. And it’s one we want to highlight and ask parents across Oldham to join us in sending a message to Nick Clegg and David Cameron that what they’re doing is wrong.”
Labour began the Sure Start scheme while it was in government, and Ms Cooper commented that she was now concerned about the future of the project.
She said: “The scale of the cuts that the government is making to local government, and the fact that they’ve removed the ringfence on the funding for Sure Start, means that there will be some local councils across the country who will decide to take money out of Sure Start. They’ll be others who’ll be forced to because of the pressure they’re under.”
She added: “That feels to me to be madness. If you support children in the earliest years of their life, that has an impact on them for decades to come, and it has an impact on society for decades to come. So I think you invest now, and you get the benefits for very many years into the future.”
Another of Labour’s innovation while in power was academy schools, which are funded directly from central government, giving headteachers more power over budgets and many other aspects of the way their school is run. Conservative Education Secretary Michael Gove has suggested he’d like all schools in England to become academies.
Debbie Abrahams listens to her Labour colleague Yvette Cooper talk to the Friezland pupils.
Ms Cooper said: “When we started the academies programme it was about supporting those schools that needed extra help, it was a really good way of turning around those schools that were in difficulties.”
She concluded: “The problem with what the government is doing now is they seem to be going for a sort of two-tier system, where they’re only supporting the good schools, and are actually making it harder for those schools that might be struggling to be turned around.”
You can listen to our interview in full here.
A total of ten candidates are standing in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. You can get in-depth interviews with Labour’s Debbie Abrahams here, BNP candidate Derek Adams here, Conservative Kashif Ali here, Peter Allen of the Greens here, Pirate Party UK candidate Loz Kaye here, Stephen Morris of the English Democrats here, UKIP candidate Paul Nuttall here and Liberal Democrat Elwyn Watkins here.
The other candidates are David Bishop of the Bus Pass Elvis Party and Nick “The Flying Brick” Delves from the Monster Raving Loony Party.
Polling day is on Thursday. Lots of other senior politicians have been campaigning in our area in recent weeks, and you can read and listen to David Cameron’s interview with Saddleworth News here. You can hear from Foreign Secretary William Hague here.
An interview with the Deputy Prime Minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is here, while a chat with Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable is here. You can hear from Labour leader Ed Miliband here, here and here, and a conversation with Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson here. UKIP leader Nigel Farage spoke to Saddleworth News here.
To read full coverage of the by-election so far from Saddleworth News, click here.
Author: Jude Gidney - Editor
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