Tell the voters what we stand for

Reporter: Our Lobby Correspondent
Date online: 02/07/2009

Meacher’s call over jobs, incomes, homes

OLDHAM MP Michael Meacher is calling on Labour to give voters a choice at the next election by saying what they really stand for.

The Oldham West and Royton MP said despite 12 years in power, the public do not know — as David Miliband, Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs minister said — what Labour is about.

He blamed the Blair regime for maintaining policies and ideas inherited from the Tories.

Mr Meacher said: “If there’s one thing the electorate craves as the election looms, it’s a genuine choice rather than a continuation of the essentially one-party State we’ve endured for the last 20-30 years.

“The outline of that choice is clear.

“First and foremost it should be the protection of jobs, incomes and homes of all those employed in the real economy.”

The Labour MP said the policy was not being pursued and instead “eye-popping levels” of taxpayer-funded grants had been put at the disposal of banks to restart lending, but instead they have just consolidated their own balance sheets.

Latest Bank of England figures show that lending to businesses and mortgage-owners, which was rising at 19.8 per cent a year in 2007, has now shrunk to a minuscule rise of 0.8 per cent a year.

Mr Meacher said: “Protecting ordinary people means using the power vested in majority ownership of several major banks to force them to give priority to getting the real economy out of recession rather than feathering their own nests.

“Then the tide of unemployment, repossession and insecurity will begin to be turned.”