On the back of their successful webinar with Oldham based businesses, Jim McMahon MP and Debbie Abrahams MP are hosting an online support session for community and voluntary sector organisations based in Oldham and Saddleworth.

On Thursday 11th June at 12pm, Jim and Debbie will host the event. Panel guests will be Rebekah Sutcliffe (Strategic Director of Reform and Communities, Oldham Council) and Laura Windsor-Welsh (Strategic Locality Lead, Action Together) to help answer any questions you may have about support and to listen to concerns about the future needs and support.

Jim said, “We’ve all be blown away by the way the community and voluntary sector has responded to this crisis, Debbie and I wanted to host this event so we could say thank you for all the work that has been done in Oldham.”

“But also, so we could listen to what the sector needs going forward, I think for a lot of organisations involved in Oldham’s response there are grey areas and gaps in the support available. And we can’t let these organisations disappear, they’ve put in a monumental effort for our borough and it’s now our turn to return the favour.”

Debbie Abrahams, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, said: “My experience as a volunteer whilst we’ve been in lockdown makes me more aware than ever about the incredible work the voluntary sector has been doing and the fantastic partnership working that’s been going on. The support that’s been provided has been a lifeline for so many people across Oldham and Saddleworth.

“Now, as we move forward, we need to see how we can better support our voluntary sector. Jim and I are determined to do everything we can to help.

“This webinar is our way to bring these incredible individuals and organisations together to see where, and how, we can do this.”

If your organisation would like to take part in the webinar please RSVP to jack.bailey@parliament.uk by 12pm on Tuesday 9th June.

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I’ve marked World Bicycle Day (3^rd June 2020) with a letter to Oldham Council encouraging them to look towards off-road routes for future cycling and walking infrastructure projects in the borough.

In my letter to Deputy Chief Executive Helen Lockwood, I have welcomed the funding that has recently been announced to bolster schemes in Chadderton and Royton, and point out possible developments of a cycle path along the Rochdale Canal to connect Oldham with both Rochdale and Manchester City centre and to utilise old railway lines as existing off-road routes where possible.

One of the biggest barriers to more people taking up cycling and walking is that they don’t feel safe. And whilst getting more people out of cars and onto a bike will help this, there can be no reason why we don’t look into alternative off-road cycle routes to reinforce this feeling of safety.

We’ve got to get serious about people using their cars less and less, and in order to do that we’re going to have to provide them with infrastructure so they can safely move around our town.

Another thing that will be really important to do to permanently change the way we move around is to increase support for school cycling training, if we build up the confidence and skills at an early age they’re more likely to carry on cycling even when they can learn to drive.

One of the most crucial aspects to this though, is that we need more bike storage facilities across Oldham and GM, it’ll be no good encouraging people to cycle instead of driving when there are no safe places to store their bikes but an abundance of car parks instead

For some time, it’s been clear that the impact of Covid-19 wouldn’t be evenly felt, and fears that some people would be more at risk because of the job they do, underlying health conditions or age group, and while much of that was covered by government early in to the lockdown, for instance by insisting on high risk groups isolating, some would take time to prove.

With the impact on care homes evident for all to see it was a failure too far that the government failed to give them the protection residents and staff needed, and it still isn’t right in many places even now.

Then we see the occupational impact which highlighted that people who were in most contact with the public would be most at risk; it sounds obvious but even today the government are failing to give key frontline workers the protection, testing and support they need.

Today Public Health England released a report on the inequalities of risk and outcomes of COVID-19. What the report shows is that for a number of reasons this disease does not treat us equally and that has profound consequences for many of us here in Oldham. The report confirms much of what we already thought, but it is noticeably silent on how we reduce the disparities it identifies. Having this information confirmed to us is an important start, but now is the time for action.

The biggest difference that the report found was in age inequalities, people who are 80 and older are seventy times more likely to die after contracting coronavirus than those under 40.  Which just goes to show how important it is that we refrain from visiting our elderly parents, grandparents and friends at the moment as hard as it may be. Until the virus is properly under control, we cannot risk putting the people we love and care about at such a risk.

Data from Public Health England’s report also shows that nationally we’ve had more than twice the number of deaths in care homes than is to be expected, worryingly though just under half of the excess care home deaths have been attributed to COVID-19. Which either means there have been many excess deaths from other causes or that care homes are under-reporting the number of COVID related deaths. It may well be some time after this pandemic before we finally learn the true toll this disease has taken on our communities.

We already knew that this disease did not treat us as equals, but now we know that the mortality rate in the most deprived areas – like Oldham – is double that of the least deprived areas in the country. The survival rate in confirmed COVID cases in the most deprived areas are lower and these poor outcomes remain after adjusting for ethnicity too.

The truth is that if you’re a taxi driver living in Oldham and of Bangladeshi background you are several times more likely to be at risk than the general population, and that’s not right. We’ve also seen a constant list of frontline workers, for instance in the NHS and working in social care who have been directly affected, behind all of those numbers are families suffering.

We must also use this to trust our own instinct and judgement too. We knew those working in high risk occupations, living in overcrowded accommodation, and those in care home settings were at greatest risk but despite calls from local councils, charities and MPs action from Government didn’t follow. As the lockdown is eased more and more people are potentially at risk if we fail to provide the support and protection we know will make a difference.

22nd of May is a difficult day for many of us here in Greater Manchester, this year marks the third anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing. 22 innocent lives were taken from us far too soon.

Today my thoughts are with the family and friends of those 22, all those who were injured, and the countless others who were deeply affected by the attack. Our thanks must always go to the police, fire and ambulance services who were first onto the scene.

In particular I’m thinking of Alison Howe and Lisa Lees, two mums from Royton who didn’t return home that night. The above image was taken at an event that Alison and Lisa’s families and friends held, it paid a wonderful tribute to them and it brought a grieving community together as one.

We must remember the amazing way in which our city came together in the weeks and months after that tragic attack, whenever I see a Worker Bee sticker on a car I’ll remember the spirit that got us through those difficult days.

Manchester Together. 22.05.17 🐝🐝

Yesterday marked the start of Mental Health Awareness week (18th-24th May 2020), and the theme for this year is kindness.

The Mental Health Foundation want to get the message out there to as many people as possible that kindness is good for our mental health and everyone around us.

The pandemic we’re in the middle of really does highlight how important our mental health is, spending most of your time inside your house and without seeing your friends and family is tough.

There has been some progress in the last few years and there is less stigma around talking about mental health issues but we still have more to do.

This afternoon I asked Transport Ministers whether they would publish the evidence that suggests personal protective equipment and a change in cash handling procedures would not help save the lives of our frontline transport workers.

It cannot be right that bus drivers are at a greater risk of dying from Covid-19 than the general population are. Government should publish the scientific advice as soon as possible so it can recieve proper scrutiny.

It really cannot be said enough times how damaging under-funding in local government is, if ministers do backtrack on their word and leave councils across England with a £10bn black hole it will require catastrophic cuts.

For the last ten years councils have been the front line, delivering vital public services that people rely on and that trend has continued in the last two months whilst we have been fighting against the coronavirus. It is local councils that have been doing everything they could on the ground to tackle coronavirus in their communities.

Here in Oldham, it is the council that have been organising in partnership with groups like Action Together to ensure that vulnerable people can still get the food and supplies that they need whilst they have no other access to it. Without the council the foodbank’s distribution hub at the Oldham Leisure Centre would not have been possible.

And the government knows that it hasn’t been easy, and government knows that it promised ‘whatever funding is needed for councils to get through this and come out the other side.’ Oldham Council estimate that their response could cost up to £46million, so far from government have promised to reimburse just £14m of that. When you take into account that Oldham council has lost over £200m in funding since 2010, you have to wonder how government thinks that councils will manage.

If councils are forced to make cuts it’ll be those key workers that we clap for every Thursday who are hit hardest, if government breaks its funding pledge to communities some of them would face losing their jobs.

Local authorities are the biggest funders of social care in England, and analysis done by the Labour Party shows that the cuts councils may be forced to make would be the equivalent of 225,000 vulnerable people losing the support which they usually rely on. A £10bn Coronavirus black hole could mean that across England, £3.5bn is cut from adult social care, £2bn cut from children’s social care and a £700m cut to local public health.

It’s not just social care where the cuts would be felt, there’d be funding gaps in other already stretched public services, including libraries, children’s centres, leisure centres, public parks, road safety and neighbourhood services.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/14/councils-in-england-fear-they-will-have-to-make-cuts-of-20

Earlier this afternoon I made my dispatch box debut as Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary in responding to Grant Shapps’ statement on the Covid-19 guidance for transport users and operators that his department had published.

I am grateful for the positive and on-going communication that myself and the Secretary of State have had over the last month, it is right that where we can we work constructively together in the national interest.

And I know that everyone across the UK is grateful for the hard work that our transport workers have put in since lockdown began, to ensure that our country keeps going, that people can move around when they need to and that goods can get where they need to be.

With our thanks to these key-workers we must also give them a voice, so that is why I asked the Secretary of State;
• Why his announcement wasn’t made before the Prime Minister’s statement on Sunday? So that people were given more than 12 hours’ notice to return to work on Monday without the official guidance in place.
• What is the scientific basis for the governments position on PPE to frontline transport staff?
• What discussions have taken place to ensure co-operation across the four nations of the UK?
• Whether the £2bn he announced last week was new money or whether it’d been announced pre-lockdown back in February.
• Whether the government will publish the advice which justifies why France is to be exempt from the 14-day quarantine policy?
• And whether the government will publish the scientific advice that led to the quarantine policy not being changed earlier?

We urgently need a comprehensive plan for the transport sector. The public want the chaos around the exit plan to end. So the Transport Secretary should take a message back to the cabinet – no more confusion, no more reckless briefings and no more delay.