After ten years of austerity it’s about time that local government are seen as the heroes that they are. I was pleased to celebrate them at this critical time at the Dispatch Box.

They have had to share a disproportionate burden of responsibility, for the cuts. We’ve asked them to do more and more for less money and that’s taken it’s toll on them. The next few weeks and months is going to be testing for all of us, and it will further test the resolve of those who work in local government on the front line of delivering public services.

It’s about time that we reward that with more than warm words, they are the glue that holds local communities together and much of their work goes unrecognised and unrewarded.

Following the Covid-19 virus progressing and the government increasingly moving to large scale isolation measures my constituency office will make immediate changes to ensure we can continue to support constituents through what will be an extremely testing and protracted time.

Steps have been taken to ensure remote working can take place and all staff will be focused on supporting constituents. The main office on Union Street will be closed to external visitors and staff will use technology to have access to correspondence and our casework system.

Telephone messages will be picked up by a dedicated staff member on a rota basis to ensure calls aren’t missed, though we’d greatly appreciate contact by email (jim.mcmahon.mp@parliament.uk) in the first instance.

Already we are experiencing extremely high volumes of casework covering many issues, often specific to the individual circumstance or business.

So far we have assisted local schools, colleges, constituent concerns on health and social care, housing, employment, and business support including insurance and financial support.

We are in regular contact with government departments, agencies and local public bodies such as the council and health service.

At the same time the government and other agencies have not yet concluded and published how they will provide sustained support, and so answers are taking time to receive, and sometimes the information we receive is patchy.

We deal with thousands of issues each year for constituents and many of those issues will continue to need support, while government and agencies continue to operate we will progress these as normal.

Advice surgeries with trained caseworkers and the MP will continue (providing ill health does not prevent it) and will be accommodated on an appointment basis by either telephone, or Skype video conferencing if you have this facility.

No face to face meetings, attendance at public meetings, home or business visits will take place. Where it is necessary to obtain paperwork to assist in casework, we will arrange for you to post to the office and it will be returned once copied for our files.

We will continue to prioritise urgent cases; those are cases which are time critical. We expect these to continue to rise and would always ask that you approach to the most appropriate agency in the first instance, and that matters which are not time critical at this time are held back.

Please take care of yourself and loved ones.

During the Queen’s Speech Debate on the environment, I stressed the need for the UK to undergo a Green Industrial Revolution. I emphasised the rich heritage of our role in the original Industrial Revolution where Oldham rose to become the King of Cotton, and an engineering giant with world leading companies like British Aerospace, Platt Brothers and Ferranti.

I set out the case that the Climate Emergency could act as a catalyst to boost skilled jobs and rebuild the economies of our towns, recognising that thousands of local companies are innovating, creating and changing the world.

The UK is at risk in a number of ways is the global temperature is to rise by 1.5^oC: flooding and coastal change; our health and productivity can be impacted; our natural ecosystems and biodiversity can be decimated; there are significant risks to global food production and trade; and the likelihood that a warmer and wetter climate in the UK increases the number of pests and diseases.

We need to take action, and we need to take it rapidly. The effects that a rise in global temperatures of just 1.5^oC is worrying enough, we need to ensure that it does not rise any further. There is so much at risk here, whether it be the potential rise in sea levels; the loss of biodiversity; the acidification of our oceans; and the very fact that it is those most vulnerable and disadvantaged who are at the greatest risk. We must arrest this decline as much as we can.

Of course, that is going to have an economic cost, but it is an investment, and it must be seen as one. We can improve our environment and we can improve the quality of our lives. If we use our cars less, and this is something we’re all guilty of myself included, we can improve our health and improve the quality of the air we breathe.

Something as simple as investing in active travel infrastructure and behaviour change programmes can deliver benefits for an individual’s health, the health service, our transport system and our wider economy for a low cost.

Investment in the Green Industrial Revolution is good economics. It makes sense to invest public money into UK researchers, developers and manufactures to make sure they’re at the forefront of our Green Economy, and that we receive some of the benefits back into the public purse.

We need to stop seeing methods to prevent climate change as ‘costs’ and start seeing them as investments. We can create hundreds of thousands of Green jobs across the whole of the UK, we can use this as an opportunity to address some of the much-needed issues in our country and our economy.

We can use targeted investment to make sure high-skilled jobs go to places where they’re needed the most; we can set up energy co-operatives so people aren’t fleeced by big energy companies and to ensure that investment goes back into communities where they’re needed.

Last week I signed up to the Friends of the Earth Climate Pledge, and I meant it – this is the start of my journey to ensuring the climate crisis is at the forefront of my work in Parliament.

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I was more than happy to sign this pledge after it was brought to my attention by a number of concerned constituents. The climate crisis is real, and we are seeing its devastating effects with the Australian Bushfires.

This is only the beginning, we have seen an increase in the number of catastrophic weather events over the last few years as we see the impact that a rise in global temperatures have. Global warming means extreme weather events at either end of the spectrum, as much as we all wish Oldham could be sunnier and warmer for that little bit longer in the summer, dealing with the effects of the climate crisis elsewhere means its not worth it.

There will be cynics who argue that the UK won’t make a difference by doing this on there own, that we’re just a drop in the pond compared to the emissions pumped out by China, India, the US and a number of other countries. And in a way they’re right, this is a global issue and it will be a global struggle to combat it. But not doing anything because we won’t change things on our own is just not good enough, we can be global leaders, we can show the rest of the world that it is possible.

We don’t have long to deal with this issue before its effects become irreversible, by the end of this parliament in 2025 I hope we have made considerable progress on our journey to net zero carbon emissions. And I’ll do my bit in Parliament, as I’m sure my colleagues on the Labour benches will do too, to try and implement a strategy which reduces our reliance on fossil fuels to cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be cheap and there will be plenty of hard decisions for us to make collectively along the way. But it’ll be worth it when we have a habitable and hospitable planet. At the end of the day that’s what it boils down to, the need to protect our planet and our environment for our children and their children.