Creating jobs and protecting jobs will be our priority if elected as MEPs to serve the people of the North East in Brussels in the European election on Thursday 22nd May.
As Labour candidates in next week’s Euro elections, Jude Kirton-Darling, Paul Brannen and Jayne Shotton are concentrating hard on what could help Newton Aycliffe and the rest of the region the most – the answer on the doorstep from North East voters is an increase in the number of good quality jobs available, especially for our young people.
Here in the North East we still ‘make things’, in fact we are the only English region that makes more than we import. Many of the things we manufacture, such as the trains that Hitachi will soon produce and the cars at Nissan, are exported and then sold in the other 27 countries of the European Union. Hence the EU is our most important market and is likely to remain so for many years to come.
Our region is also an overall net beneficiary from our EU membership. Since the 1980s we have received large sums of EU social and regional funding – £490 million in the last 5 years alone. This public investment draws in private money and central government funds, and has underpinned our regional infrastructure, business development and training programmes. We are in this situation, because we are the poorest region in England and one of the aims of the EU is to help develop the poorer parts of Europe. The North East is set to receive a further £660 million over the next 7 years and part of our role as Members of the European Parliament will be to make sure it is well spent; helping create as many jobs as possible.
We are committed to ensuring that the EU funds we receive as a region are used to create local jobs, especially for young people. Labour has fought for investment and jobs in the North East but the Tories and UKIP are putting jobs in Newton Aycliffe and across the North East at risk. We will spend our time in the European Parliament working hard to defend the interests of the people of the North East. To begin with we will be asking young people from the region to join us in pressing the UK government to apply for the £81m allocated to the UK from the EU Youth Guarantee to start creating decent apprenticeships and jobs for 18-25 year olds in this region – money the government simply have not applied for.
If elected we will also work hard to defend the rights of working people, rights that have been long fought for but now stand threatened by UKIP and the Conservatives. Readers should be aware that when Farage and Cameron talk of ‘cutting EU red tape’ and ‘repatriating powers’, what they really mean is ending rights to four weeks paid holiday, health and safety, maternity and paternity leave etc. There is a lot at stake in the election on 22 May. Please vote and please vote Labour.
Jude Kirton-Darling, Paul Brannen and Jayne Shotton.
Euro MP candidates with Phil Wilson M.P. at the Hitachi site
