Labour Party Conference is always an exciting time, as the party puts its future strategy in the shop window. The policies, promises and commitments outlined in Liverpool will have a lasting and positive impact on Ipswich and Suffolk.
The biggest announcements were around the NHS, with the Prime Minister saying, "the responsibility of this party is not just to celebrate the NHS, it's to make it better".
He launched a new online hospital to transform how healthcare is delivered. The new NHS Online hospital will allow patients to be triaged quickly through the NHS App, monitored at home, and receive scans and treatments on their doorstep instead of in a physical hospital. This will cut waiting times and deliver the equivalent of 8.5 million appointments and assessments in first three years. A key part of Labour’s Plan for Change target to cut waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks.
Improving skills was also a theme, with the announcement of a new higher skills target - for two-thirds of young people to go to university, further education or take on a gold standard apprenticeship. This aims to open-up choices, to enable people to get good, secure jobs and grow earnings and productivity.
There is a commitment to establishing parity of esteem between technical and academic study and raising the status and quality of further education with a new respect for colleges and training.
These changes will not only help to build a Britain fit for the future but will mean that technical qualifications – undervalued and overlooked by previous Tory governments – are afforded the same respect as university degrees.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband announced that the Government will “send the Frackers Packing”, by speeding up moves to ban fracking once and for all. Fracking has been repeatedly shown to be dangerous, unsafe and harmful to the environment. The last time fracking was tried in the UK, in Lancashire, it resulted in nearly 200 earthquakes in less than a year.
With Sizewell up the road, we are very much at the centre of clean, green energy.
Around 200 schools and 200 NHS sites, a third of NHS trusts, have already been funded to have solar panels installed by Great British Energy, a company owned by the British people, for the British people.
Miliband also announced details of the Clean Energy Jobs Plan, outlining how jobs in the sector will double from 430,000 now to 830,000 by 2030, and how he will ensure they are good jobs - with fair pay and the very best rights at work.
Labour is ensuring that 31 priority occupations will benefit from this rapid expansion in the clean energy workforce - from 25,000 more engineers and researchers to 26,000 more welders and electricians, and 36,000 more construction workers.
Ahead of this plan, the Government will also launch a major initiative focused on boosting workers’ rights. This includes the introduction of a new Fair Work Charter which will ensure that clean energy jobs are always good jobs.
A very interesting announcement by Lisa Nandy, which didn’t get much publicity, was the Town of Culture.
The UK Town of Culture competition will see multiple towns competing to win the title with the winning town delivering a cultural programme, which will help to boost pride in place by shining a spotlight and enabling them to tell their unique story.
The competition will build on the success of the UK City of Culture programme, which has seen significant lasting impacts across winning cities of such as Hull and Coventry.
Surely the unique story of Ipswich deserves to be told to a wider audience?
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