Celia Dignan, Chair of H&WG CLP
Celia Dignan, Chair of H&WG CLP

Message from Celia Dignan, H&WG CLP Chair

Our community is facing unprecedented challenges. Many people face severe hardship due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In Hornsey & Wood Green, claims for unemployment benefit have soared by 180 per cent. A fifth of our working age people are on furlough schemes that will shortly end while many are excluded from any government support, including thousands of freelance workers in the creative industries. 

In our neighbouring Haringey CLP Tottenham, an unprecedented 45 per cent of residents are unemployed or also on furlough schemes that are winding own. The number of local foodbanks in Honsey & Wood Green has more than doubled.  The government is mismanaging the pandemic in the UK and their recovery plans are totally inadequate.

Our members continue to actively support local community support schemes but if we are all to weather this crisis together, leaving nobody behind, we also need political solutions. We believe in solidarity, not charity.

Adequate Funding For Haringey Council

Local Councils around the country faced this pandemic with funding reduced and services weakened following ten years of Tory government austerity policies. Haringey’s Labour Council has done an excellent job of providing and co-ordinating emergency help but the government has not fully reimbursed them. Our members will campaign for proper government funding for Haringey and all UK councils. Haringey Council must be in a position to continue to deliver ever more vital council homes and services and provide critical help for our community.

Support our local jobs, incomes and economy 

Haringey’s jobs and economy will survive if the government provides support to the people and local businesses who need it. The government must act now to save jobs and small businesses with grants, and extend the furlough scheme ensuring it covers all who need it. We support a Green Recovery. We believe the dysfunctional Universal Credit scheme should be scrapped and replaced with a system that fully supports people’s needs. Government must also enact legislation to end low pay and insecure work.

End the hostile environment

We are proud to live in a diverse constituency and borough. That diversity enriches all our lives.  We support the Black Lives Matter movement and oppose the hostile environment for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. We support full voting and residential rights for EU nationals.

We support the rights of disabled people to full eqaulity. As furlough ends, some with disabilities who live in our community will face a choice between their life and their livelihood. Alternative support must be provided for those who have to shield. The hostile environment disabled people face in the benefits system is unacceptable and must change.

Free NHS & strengthen local democracy

We are proud of our NHS and all who work in it and we campaign to ensure it remains free at the point of use and that privatisation is ended. The government is accelerating plans to centralise control and remove local oversight of NHS services through an unnecessary structural reorganisation. We will vigorously campaign against these proposals that will bring about further privatisation of our health services. 

The plan also includes measures to remove Care Services from local council control. Along with recent proposals in the government’s ‘Planning for the Future’ white paper to divest local councils of their control of local planning, these changes would massively reduce the role and influence of local councils and the voice of local people in our government and control of our local services.

Securing our young people’s future

Young people have fared badly during Covid. Child poverty is rising and income inequality has a direct impact on educational inequality. During lockdown, children and young people from poorer families were unable to access remote learning, with many not having access to computers or internet at home. Children lost six months of education and those taking GCSEs and A Levels experienced significant distress die to government mishandling of exam grades. Those facing examinations in summer 2021 need certainty about arrangements next year. 

Children, young people and their families should not pay for the Covid crisis. Yet the government is preventing Transport for London (TfL) from continuing to provide children and young people with free transport to school. Removing this right to free school travel, along with other schemes, has been made a condition of support for TfL as it seeks to address funding losses due to Covid. 

Hornsey & Wood Green Labour stands with our community in these and many other struggles. We will continue to demonstrate our solidarity through both practical support and political campaigning. Please join us in fighting to ensure that everyone in our community comes through this crisis with equal justice and fairness.

Solidarity.

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