Yvette Cooper MP: Change can’t come soon enough

Yvette Cooper MP writes: Instead, families and businesses across Yorkshire are being hit by recession yet again.

People are worse off than they were five years ago.

Things should be getting better but instead we are being dragged down, wasting the brilliant talents and strengths we know we have across our towns.

It is not good enough and doesn’t have to be like this.

At the heart of it are broken promises from a prime minister who just doesn’t get it.

Almost everything Rishi Sunak pledged to do a year ago has fallen apart.

He said he would grow the economy – instead we’re now in Rishi’s recession.

He said he would cut waiting lists. They’re soaring.

My inbox is full of heart-breaking cases of families being treated in corridors in Pinderfields or waiting and waiting for appointments and desperately needed treatment.

He said he would stop the boats. He hasn’t.

He’s gone for gimmicks instead of grip, and hasn’t taken the strong action to stop criminal smuggler gangs that I’ve called for from the start.

The problem is that families round here are paying the price of all these broken promises.

Recession makes everything else worse.

It hits our town centres where we’re seeing too many empty shops.

It affects local businesses who delay investment.

The cost of living crisis continues with many families facing big debts.

And homeowners are still paying the price of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini budget that pushed up interest rates and crashed the economy with its massive tax cuts for the rich.

As Rishi Sunak flies around the country in a helicopter, people in our towns are struggling to find the money for the bus.

One man in Pontefract told me this weekend how his adult daughter has had to move back home because she can’t afford her rent

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We urgently need a proper industrial strategy to get our economy going again with a focus on jobs and apprenticeships in Yorkshire.

We need good jobs, paying a decent wage, that people can support a family on.

The brilliant, talented young people I meet in our local schools and at New College and Castleford College deserve an optimistic future.

We need a proper windfall tax on oil and gas companies' record profits that can be invested in bringing everyone’s energy bills down and driving the new green technologies that will create future high skilled jobs.

And we need business rates scrapped and replaced so high street shops aren’t penalised.

We’ve been through tough times before – and we’ve pulled through.

But it’s easier when there’s a government on our side, working with us not against us.

We’ve not had that for a long time.

For our towns and local economy, the change we need can’t come soon enough.