Ten good reasons to vote Labour today

Here are ten good reasons to vote Labour in today’s crucial City Council elections.

• Ending Birmingham’s Tory funding crisis – in under two years, we’ve ended the Tories’ shameful underfunding of Birmingham.
  
  Our city was subjected to the sharpest cuts of any metropolitan authority under Tory formulas that punished cities with high rates of deprivation. Now the budget is balanced and investment is going into services again, thanks to Labour’s fair funding settlement.

• Rebuilding public services – the new Council Budget invests heavily in cleaner streets, extended library opening hours, and better youth services.

• Ending the bin strike – an end to the bin strike is in sight after Labour negotiated a realistic settlement with Unite. None of the other parties have set out how they plan to bring the strike to an end.
  
  There are ultimately only two choices: a negotiated settlement, or sacking the striking workers. Labour is committed to a fair settlement that avoids repeating the equal pay mistakes of the past. Other parties need to come clean about their intentions.

• Investing in communities – after the Tories let Northfield and Birmingham down over the Levelling Up Fund, Labour is investing in communities. In our community, that means a ten year, £20 million commitment to Hawkesley under Pride in Place, with decisions made by residents.

• Lifting thousands of children out of poverty – scrapping the Two Child Limit is lifting 450,000 children out of poverty, and benefit more than 5,000 children in the Birmingham Northfield constituency. It also means an end to the terrible ‘rape clause’ which meant that women had prove they had been assaulted to receive an exemption.

• Funding new breakfast clubs and nursery places – Labour is giving kids the best start in life with new school-based nursery places at Northfield Manor Primary, Bellfield, and Hawkesley Church Primary. We’re funding free breakfast clubs at Merrit’s Brook E-Act Primary, Bellfield schools, Albert Bradbeer Primary, and Forestdale Primary. That’s real help with nutrition and the cost of living.

• New local specialist SEND school – thanks to lobbying in Parliament, funding has now been secured for a new autism specialist school in Frankley, making specialist places available closer to home.

• Taking action on the cost of living – pharmacy charges have been frozen for the second year in a row. The triple lock has been protected. Bus fares have been  capped at £3, and rail fares frozen for the first time in more than 40 years.

• New rights at work – the new Employment Rights Act guarantees sick pay from day one of illness, extended family leave rights, no-one forced onto a zero hours contact, an end to ‘fire and rehire’, and new rights for unions to organise in employers like Amazon.

• Investing in local transport – we’re bringing the buses back under public control for the first time in 35 years, meaning that timetables, fares, and service standards can be set locally. As your MP, I’ve secured investment in the Midlands Rail Hub, which will mean six trains an hour restored to the Cross City Line.

• Railway public ownership – as promised in our manifesto, we’ve returned local commuter services to public ownership, with the rest to come. We’re ending the disaster that was rail privatisation, and investing in a railway run by and for the nation. Locally, we’re making sure that young people in the area can benefit from the jobs that rail investment is bringing.