Jeremy Corbyn's New Year Message

I think it’s fair to say, that 2016 is a year that will live long in all our memories.

It saw twelve months of enormous change not just in Britain but the world.

But the New Year gives all the opportunity to start afresh.

One of the best things about my job as Leader of the Labour Party is meeting some fantastic people all over the country. But every day I see the political system letting down the people of this country; how decisions made in Westminster are making people’s lives harder. Whether that’s elderly people not receiving the care at home they deserve, putting huge strain on them and their family, or whether it’s the people waiting longer in A&E or on trolleys because our National Health Service and social care system is at breaking point, despite the best efforts of the wonderful and dedicated staff.  Whether it’s the homeless families who are being priced out of a housing market that only works for the few. This Christmas, 120,000 children didn’t have a home to call their own. That’s scandalous. And it’s damaging those young people’s formative years. Our children also need a first class education for everyone, not just for a privileged few.

 As well as insecure housing there is massive insecurity at work too. Millions of people can’t plan their lives because whether on temporary or zero hours contracts they don’t know what job or what hours they’ll have from day to day, week to week or month to month. And for many, pay is so low that it doesn’t make ends meet.

2016 will be defined in history by the referendum on our EU membership. People didn’t trust politicians and they didn’t trust the European Union. I understand that. I’ve spent over 40 years in politics campaigning for a better way of doing things, standing up for people, taking on the establishment, and opposing decisions that would make us worse off.

We now have the chance to do things differently. To build an economy that invests and works for everyone across all our nations and regions.

Labour accepts and respects the result of the referendum. We won’t be blocking our leaving the European Union, but we won’t stand by. Those in charge today have put the jobs market, housing, the NHS and social care in crisis. We can’t let them mess this up. It’s about everyone’s future. A Brexit that protects the bankers in the City and continues to give corporate handouts to the biggest companies is not good enough.

Labour was founded to stand up for people, and we founded the institutions that do that day in, and day out, like our NHS. We are the party that listens to you and makes Britain better. Let’s do that, together, in 2017.

Jeremy Corbyn's speech to our South East Regional Conference (2) The Solution

Housing:


"Labour will allow councils to borrow to build council housing again and we will suspend right to buy so that when that housing is built it stays. We will invest in building genuinely affordable homes to buy, rent or for shared ownership. We have put forward a plan to invest in building housing and to create skilled jobs in the construction sector, and to meet higher standards of energy efficiency benefiting the occupants and the environment.


"We will toughen regulation on the private rented sector to ensure homes are fit for human habitation and rents are controlled."


Environment:

"We’re not going to use public money to subsidise dirty, groundwater-polluting, landscape-scarring industries like fracking.


"We will invest in the transition to a low carbon economy, not clinging on to polluting technologies that we can consign to history by harnessing technological advances with public investment.
And that investment delivers a return; a stronger economy, better jobs with higher incomes that produce more tax revenue to better fund public services.
We have huge natural resources in the UK, a world-beating history of scientific research and technological development including in many of our institutions of academic and scientific excellence [but] as a country we lag behind the rest of the world’s major economies in generating energy from renewable sources. We lag behind on the speed of our broadband and we lag behind on our transport infrastructure too.


"Nowhere is that more true that on our railways."


Rail:
"The next Labour Government will take back control from the privateers and put control in the hands of passengers, commuters and elected politicians. We will invest in rail, invest in on-board broadband and cut fares."


NHS:


"The NHS is Labour’s proudest creation and as someone who once represented NHS workers, I know the dedication of NHS staff. But, under the Tories, the NHS is in crisis like never before.


"We know that flu epidemic or the norovirus can lead to a winter crisis but the Tories have put the NHS in crisis in spring, summer, autumn and winter. NHS waiting lists have never been longer. NHS deficits have never been larger and they are growing. More people are waiting longer in pain for an operation. More people are waiting longer, often in severe pain, in A&E.


"Over £4 billion of cuts to adult social care inflicted under the Tories has left hundreds of thousands of people without a care package. Thousands more with minimal 15 minute visits and more elderly people turning up at A&E due to neglect and not safe to be discharged home because the support is no longer there.

"Faced with this unprecedented crisis in A&Es, this unprecedented pressure on the NHS, what is the Tory solution? They wasted £3 billion on a top-down reorganisation of the NHS, they have privatised services, like ambulances in Sussex, and that privatisation has failed. Our great friend Ken Loach has quite rightly lead the protests against a £700 million privatisation of NHS services in Bath. Our excellent Shadow Health Secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, has already condemned this. They are threatening a new round of A&E closures and downgrades.


"This is why we are determined to bring all NHS Services back into the family of NHS provision.
That’s why we are focusing our National Campaign Day on Saturday 26 November on defending our NHS. So I want every CLP in the country out in their community campaigning to defend our NHS and to highlight the damage that the Tories have done. Our National Health Service - free at the point of use - with parity of esteem for mental health services and integrated with social care. That is at the very core of our vision for the kind of society we should be."


Strength in Numbers:


"Because our party doesn’t have the benevolence of the press barons, it doesn’t have the donations of oligarchs. What we have is each other. Over half a million of us. More members than every other political party in Britain, along with the millions in our affiliated trade unions.


"Our Labour Party now has over 550,000 individual members. That membership is our most valuable resource. If we organise it, then our ability to speak to voters, stand candidates, and lead campaigns in our communities, that ability is second to none. And working together, we can expose their failures on the economy, their failures on housing, their shambolic Brexit, their failed privatisation of our railways.


"By working together we can get more Labour councillors next year and a Labour Government to rebuild and transform our country so that no one and no community is left behind."

Right to Buy - another uncosted, unfunded & unbelievable announcement from the Tories

Emma Reynolds, Labour’s Shadow Housing Minister, responding to the Tories’ announcement on Right to Buy for housing association tenants, said:

The Tories can’t stand up for working people. On their watch wages are down £1,600 and we’ve seen the longest fall in living standards since the 1870s. 

This is yet another uncosted, unfunded and unbelievable announcement from the Tories. 

Having exhausted the magic money tree, the Tories now want people to believe that they can magic up billions of pounds a year from selling off a few council homes. Last year that raised just over £100 million, while this policy costs £4.5 billion a year. 

Under David Cameron home ownership is at its lowest point for three decades – there are over 200,000 fewer home owners since 2010. 

Labour will help people own their own home, that’s why we support Right to Buy. But in the 21st Century that means building homes and not forgetting the vast majority of people that want to buy their own home but currently rent privately or live with their parents. 

Labour’s manifesto set out a better plan for all local first time buyers to get priority access to homes built. We will ensure Britain builds the homes working people need, getting at least 200,000 homes built a year by 2020, backed by a comprehensive plan - the first in a generation - and a £5 billion Future Homes Fund to support the building of homes for first time buyers.”