SalfordOnline.com has invited all three local MPs to write their own pieces on whether the country should Vote Leave or Vote Remain in the 23 June EU Referendum.
Rebecca Long-Bailey MP was elected to Salford and Eccles in May 2015. Since September 2015 she has been Shadow Minister for the Treasury.
Since being elected she has consistently challenged Chancellor George Osborne over his handling of the deficit and on tax credit cuts.
She writes…
The EU needs big changes. Changes that make sure it serves the communities it seeks to represent.
People across Salford are quite right to be angry.
Angry that our hospitals and schools are in a state of crisis and starved of funding.
Angry that many across Salford can’t get a home.
Angry that our public services are being savagely cut so that there is simply no safety net for local people to fall back on.
Europe with all its faults however, (and I am no EU cheerleader that’s for sure) was not the primary cause of all this.
Savage cuts forced through by David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson and the Tory party did this.
Instead of training enough doctors and nurses, we now rely on over 50,000 medical staff from the EU to keep our NHS going.
New house builds have fallen to their lowest level since the 1920’s and alongside this the Tories seek to completely destroy council housing.
It is no coincidence that Greater Manchester has seen a spike in homelessness and also foodbank use since the Government’s austerity agenda began.
There are some problems with Europe I agree, but beware, there are a lot of myths as well.
Over three million British jobs are linked to our trade with the EU and it is by far the UK’s largest trading partner.
It is the world’s largest single market with half of our exports going to EU countries, worth over £220 billion a year to the UK economy.
Over 200,000 British companies export to the EU.
If we leave Europe, nobody knows what our future trading relationship with the EU would be.
The Brexit campaign state that we can secure trade deals but as they are formal legal agreements they can take time to negotiate. There is also a risk that any new deal may not be as favourable and trade agreements can also be revoked at any time.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that investors and the markets will be concerned and that uncertainty could put millions of jobs at risk.
No one can be completely certain what could happen after 24 June if Brexit is the result but many global economic experts predict severe economic shocks.
In terms of employment, trade union leaders have warned that a recession triggered by Brexit could cost in excess of 500,000 public servants their jobs alone.
Not to mention that holiday pay, employment support for parents, equal pay for women, health and safety and rights for temporary workers are all under threat.
These hard fought rights are often the ‘red tape’ we hear complaints about. Complaints championed by those individuals and corporations with big money who are backing the leave campaign. You do the maths.
Europe certainly needs to address its balance of interests between people and big business but the leave campaign has far from clean hands.
Many people believe that money paid into the EU is a waste and we do not see a return on our investment.
In terms of funding, at a time when the North West received very little money from central government we relied upon EU grants to support our regeneration projects.
Between 2014 and 2020 the North West will receive over £845 million in EU funding.
I might feel somewhat differently about the risks of leaving the EU were a bold Labour Government in power but outside of the EU I fear that funding of this scale will not find its way to Salford.
We already have a Tory Chancellor who says he wants to devolve power to our region but savagely cuts the necessary resources to even run our most basic public services.
The EU needs big changes, which is why Labour is campaigning for us to remain. To create a better EU we need to be at the negotiating table, not standing on the outside having to adhere to rules we had no say in deciding.
We need a European Union that serves the interests of ordinary people.
But the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we cut ourselves off from all the good things that membership of the European Union has brought, and throw ourselves on the mercy of the current Government, or do we keep hold of them and fight for change?
Main image by Ian Goodyear Photography
