'Many of us will begin 2023 with the best of intentions'

MP for Ellesmere Port

IN WISHING all my constituents a Happy New Year – and certainly a much happier one than 2022 – I know many of us will begin 2023 with the best of intentions.

Some of us will start the new year with goals – either personally or professionally – that we will hopefully achieve in the weeks and months ahead, while others may have one clear objective only.

From my perspective, my number one goal is to see the day as soon possible when we can all begin to prosper under a Labour Government; obviously the calling of a General Election is in the Prime Minister’s gift and with the Conservative Party so far behind in the polls it seems most unlikely that there will be one this year. That said, whilst this time last year Boris Johnson’s position as Prime Minister was looking precarious, nobody could have predicted how the year would have panned out with persistent political turmoil and in the end three Prime Ministers. I will stick my neck out here and predict we will not have as many Prime Ministers as that this year!

As we start the new year and reflect on the previous 12 months no-one could have predicted this time last year the vicious Russian onslaught on the good people Ukraine and the associated devastating consequences on Europe and indeed across large parts of the world. This time last year we were emerging from the pandemic and so I had high hopes then for the 12 months ahead of us. Reflecting on my hopes, the backlog in the NHS and other services have been much more difficult to tackle than many people might have imagined. Covid still remains a concern, but the program of vaccinations has meant that the outcomes for sufferers are much improved, enabling most of us to continue our lives as we did before. As I write this though the traditional pressures on the NHS which we tend to see during the Winter are starting earlier and becoming more prolonged and serious.

The mistakes on handling the economy by the UK Government in the last year come on top of 12 years of ongoing underfunding of our essential services and the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine mean that 2022 was marked by an horrific cost-of-living crisis affecting millions of citizens which will almost certainly be the most prominent issue in 2023. The ongoing pressures this has created mean my staff in my Ellesmere Port office have dealt with increasing numbers of issues with almost 27,000 emails from constituents alongside many phone calls and visits to our new office in 31 Whitby Road. Sadly I cannot see any respite from this in at least the first half of the year and that more and more people will struggle to make ends meet as the highest inflation we have seen for a generation eats away at people’s income.

More generally, I hope that 2023 will bring good health and prosperity to the good people in the towns of Ellesmere Port and Neston and the villages surrounding them that I am honoured to serve.