People in our area so often tell me that the system just doesn’t work for our area and our community. As our public services and transport declined, and hardworking parents struggled to make ends meet as good jobs disappeared, investment kept being funnelled to London and the South.

Instead of fixing this system, the previous government didn’t just paper over the cracks but was acting to make it worse, offering false promises of ‘levelling up’ while Rishi Sunak boasted in private that he was moving funding from “deprived” areas to wealthy towns in the Home Counties.

The Government has been taking direct action to fix that system, improving the lives of people in areas like ours and ending fourteen years in which the north and its people have been overlooked.

Labour is investing £15.6 billion of funding for local transport projects, delivering Mass Transit in West Yorkshire and once in a generation support for local bus services. This will help local people access jobs they simply wouldn’t have been able to before, increase footfall in our town centres, ensure young people can get to school reliably, and make businesses viable.

But this isn’t just individual investments, impactful as they will be; Labour is reforming the way in which investment is allocated. The new system will finally take account of the long-term benefits that arise from transformational investments in Yorkshire - new jobs and industries to unlock the dormant potential of towns across our country.

This Government is also overhauling the way local councils are funded, fixing the unfair, outdated system left behind by the Conservatives and allocating money according to need.

Previously, places like ours were less likely to get essential funding for local parks, libraries, and other services, while the Tories moved funding away from deprived areas to affluent ones.

Now, the decade-old local government funding system will be reformed to get councils back on stable footing, improve the lives for people in our community, deliver essential funding for better public services, and target deprivation.

As this reform takes effect, the Government is taking rapid action to reduce child poverty and support young families, extending free school meals to children with a parent in receipt of universal credit.

Now, every child whose household is on universal credit, will get a free, nutritious lunch. Instead of having to learn on an empty stomach, reducing their attainment and limiting their potential, children will have a better chance to succeed.

It’s also a game changer for hard working parents from in our area, who just want to do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay and be able to provide for their family, putting £500 back in their pocket and pulling a full 100,000 children out of poverty entirely.

Local families have had enough of sticking plaster solutions to a system that doesn’t work for the North and Northern people. Fundamentally fixing that system will take time, but I am proud we are renewing our country with communities like ours at its heart, and taking action to support hard working families.