A good week down in Westminster, here’s some of what I got up to
𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀
This week I questioned the DWP Minister about apprenticeship vacancy periods and whether more could be done to ensure opportunities are there at the right time for school leavers.
I also pressed the case for greater skills devolution following the publication of the initial Milburn Review. Local areas understand their economies best and should have more power to shape training and skills provision around local jobs and growth opportunities.
𝗖𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼-𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿
I was pleased to attend a Parliamentary reception marking the first anniversary of the Mutual and Co-operative Sector Business Council.
Co-operatives and mutuals make an important contribution to our economy, creating good jobs, keeping wealth rooted in communities and giving people a greater stake in the organisations they rely on. It was a welcome opportunity to reflect on the progress made over the last year and the opportunities ahead.
𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝟭𝟬-𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗡𝗛𝗦 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻
The House voted on the Health Bill this week as Parliament continues its work to reform and strengthen our health services.
Improving patient outcomes, reducing waiting times and ensuring the NHS is fit for the future remain key priorities, and scrutiny of this legislation is an important part of that process. Ultimately, we want to move from analogue to digital, from treatment to prevention, and from hospital care to community care.
𝗩𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹
Members also voted on the Armed Forces Bill. Our Armed Forces personnel make extraordinary sacrifices in service to our country. It is vital that legislation keeps pace with the needs of serving personnel, veterans and their families, ensuring they receive the support and recognition they deserve.
Alongside parliamentary business, I continued meeting with colleagues, organisations and stakeholders working to improve opportunities for communities across our borough and beyond. Now I’ve been over to Makerfield to campaign, it’s time to be back in Oldham.
Greater Manchester Transport Museum has an open day tomorrow (Saturday) which includes bus rides out and behind the scenes tours too. It’s a great museum and of course is home to the Oldham Corporation buses and many others.
The museum is based at the Queens Road depot at Cheetham Hill, with heritage bus pick ups at various points.
Admission is £7.50 for adults, children under 16 free entry.
I spoke in Parliament and representations to the government over many months about issues with the current disjointed system of supporting school leavers into apprenticeships.
It’s reassuring to see that the Milburn Review initial findings have been published this week. Here is my piece for for LabourList about the findings and why changes to the vacancy period alongside more devolution are needed to to help solve the problem.
“The government is determined to turn the tide on the scandal of youth unemployment, recognising that the system itself must change, a message repeated in the government-commissioned Young People and Work report led by Alan Milburn.
The report makes for sobering reading, with almost a million young people left in limbo. It outlines how dysfunctional and disconnected the system has become. We are paying more for worse outcomes, and that must change.
Apprenticeships remain one of the most effective routes into a good career, providing pride, dignity and security for working-class young people. Yet they have been undermined by the false perception they are second best to university education.
The facts speak for themselves. Starts for 16 to 24-year-olds have fallen by 35% since the Apprenticeship Levy was introduced nearly a decade ago, while Level 2 starts for young people have dropped by 68%.
There are signs of renewed focus. The government has announced plans for 50,000 additional apprenticeships alongside reforms to the skills system and half a million “Earn and Learn” opportunities to help young people build foundations for work and progression, and better employer support for training costs.
But it remains that part of the problem is that too many young people are still being pushed through systems that do not work for them. The insistence on English and Maths resits can deter school leavers desperate to escape classrooms where they have often been made to feel inadequate.
Today’s young people face challenges in a world that is hyper-connected digitally while increasingly socially isolated. For too long it has been easier to blame young people themselves than confront the failures of the system they are expected to navigate.
I was proud to become an apprentice technician on leaving school, and prouder still that our sons have followed the same path, the youngest only recently starting as an apprentice mechanic. But one thing remains true across thirty years: apprenticeships are not integrated well enough into the education system or valued for the opportunities they provide.
That failure is clear in the transition from school into work. In 2024, only 16% of the 99,380 apprenticeship vacancies advertised appeared during the two months when young people were leaving school. At the same time, young people are required to remain in education, employment or training until the age of 18. That means pushing school leavers onto courses they may have little interest in, only for many to leave once an apprenticeship opportunity presents. Others disappear from the system altogether. It is costly, inefficient and avoidable.
But it’s not the only cultural and structural change needed. Whitehall cannot continue trying to govern a labour market and economy as diverse as ours from the centre. Devolution is transformative because it allows a place to rally for its people, and it is self-evident that Local leaders, mayors and skills providers, working alongside employers, understand the needs of their communities far better.
We are not starting from scratch. Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and others are already investing in skills hubs, technical routes and stronger alignment between employers and training providers. Yet with greater flexibility to design pathways, courses and support, they could do more.
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill offers the route to go further through “devolution by default”, giving local areas the right to request powers over employment, apprenticeships and skills. Now it’s time to embrace it.
Labour, as the party of working people know that a country and its economy can only thrive if it values the workers who power it. If we fail to invest in young people, the cost of failure will always be greater.”
The footage shown of 18-year-old Henry Nowak has had an impact on many of us for exactly this reason; that could have been any one of our sons walking home, and he deserved better than the brutal murder he endured. Worse still, in his final moments, his cries for help were not acted upon by police officers who should have been there to protect him, while his killer looked on.
There are moments which move us, and this was one of them. The courage and dignity shown by Henry’s family after the sentencing stands as a light in an otherwise dark story.
His father, Mark, described the injustice of their sons experience and called for action on knife crime. They also called for his memory to be respected and not used for division: “We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension.”
The responses from political leaders reflected that sentiment across the vast majority of the political spectrum. But not Reform, who, in defiance of the wishes of Henry’s family, called for “pure, cold rage”. They then used an image of Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, misrepresenting her response earlier that morning to imply that she had said white lives did not matter. I have much to disagree with the Conservatives on, and politics can be a rough business as I know only too well, but this crosses a line. I see this for what it is.
Far-right thugs descended on Southampton last night. A response all too familiar. They do not own the hurt; no one feels it more deeply than Henry’s family. Nor do they own the moral response to the sickening attack or the questions surrounding the police response itself. Few could have failed to be moved, and even angered, by what happened. Henry did not deserve to be attacked, and he did not deserve to die without the dignity and compassion that an innocent young man was due.
We have to hold to account those in positions of power who are meant to protect us, and we have to root out, with far greater determination, the knife crime that continues to impact so many young people. It affects not only those who are killed or injured, but also the unrecorded fear many young people live with, knowing that risk exists within their own communities.
Henry’s family has called for knife crime to be treated as a national emergency, and I fully support those calls.
I have campaigned over a long period of time on knife crime and youth violence, and we know that in our own borough it remains a serious concern. It is a campaign for one simple reason: no parent should have to worry whether their child will make it home at night, and no young person should have their life cut short by such a senseless act.
This has to be seen for the crisis it is. I do not want a similar tragedy to strike our borough in the future, and I will keep fighting for action locally.
it was great to sit down with Gill Morris from the Devo Agency Podcast in Chadderton Town Hall to talk about all things devolution and how we can power-up our regions.
Look out tomorrow on Spotify and YouTube with the full episode. To see a preview from the episode, head to
This is an important read from Oldham Labour Group Leader Cllr Arooj Shah.
For too long, too many people have tried to divide communities.
When politics becomes a competition of grievance, communities lose. When misinformation and division take hold, extremists of all stripes benefit.
The answer isn’t to retreat into our separate corners. It’s to build stronger communities, tackle inequality and focus on the things that bring people together.
The real issues facing working people are cost of living pressures, decent jobs, good housing, safe streets and opportunities for our kids.
Oldham has always been at its best when people stand together, not when they’re set against one another.
When I posted my own reflections, as sadly expected it was quickly followed by comments from political opponents who would rather continue the politics of division than step up to improve things. Put bias and party politics to one side, but the borough front and centre.
Great to see buying British being championed at the highest level of government.
Every government department, police force, council and the NHS that buys vehicles with public money should back British industry where possible. Good for jobs, good for the economy and good for communities built on manufacturing, while still delivering value for taxpayers.
I’ve raised this repeatedly through Written Parliamentary Questions to the Home Office, Cabinet Office and DWP because procurement is one of the biggest tools we have to lead by example in supporting British jobs and investment.
I was proud to become an apprentice technician after leaving school and I know personally how important it is to back home grown industries to build resilience in our economy, strengthen our national security, and provide more good-quality & well-paid jobs to local people.
We’re already seeing Mayors lead the way on this too, including for re-regulated bus services here in Greater Manchester through the Bee Network as well as in West Yorkshire. Public money should work harder for local communities and British industry.
It is never good to see the town you love in the news for the wrong reasons, but we also have to face the fact that communities are deliberately being divided and set against one another.
In a borough like ours cohesion isn’t a passive act, it requires a lot of hard work to confront segregation and provide positive opportunities for people from different backgrounds to come together, especially when there are always those who set out to exploit division. Aside from the very extremes of politics that was a belief shared by elected political leaders in Oldham who had learnt the hard way from the ashes of the 2001 Oldham Riots exactly 25 years ago.
Social media has helped amplify division, feeding it into the streams of every resident who opens social media. There is hardly a community forum, newspaper comments section free from the now normalised hate speech, let alone pages deliberately set up for this purpose. Our political culture is increasingly being shaped by that new reality, normalising hostility and playing on identity and grievance politics.
Oldham, more than many places, understands where that can lead.
At the same time politics itself has become hostile. Countless reports of intimidation, abuse, harassment, death threats and criminal damage impact not just those who are the immediate victims but put off decent people from standing as candidates at all.
This article raises serious concerns about the role played by political parties, online activists, and toxic political culture in deepening mistrust and division within the borough. It also challenges mainstream parties to do more both to confront that culture and to listen to people who feel unheard and that things are simply not getting better.
There are real issues we have to confront, and we should never seek to diminish them, or marginalise those raising concerns. If we do we force debate into the fringes, and the more that happens the more it grows in numbers.
I take that responsibility seriously. Like the vast majority of decent people in our borough, I want to see an Oldham that is united, not divided.
That will require a more full frontal challenge to those cynically exploiting our borough, and much more effort to build a common ground where concerns are heard and acted upon.
Those efforts will be fought against as vested interests are called to account, but to accept this is just how things are now isn’t an option.
Equally where parties and leaders are contributing to the change needed, across all parties and independents that should be recognised too.
𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀
𝗖𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼-𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿
𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝟭𝟬-𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗡𝗛𝗦 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻
𝗩𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹
Worth a read 
Jim McMahon OBE MP 