Last week, I voted to clean up High Peak’s rivers and waters. I voted for tougher penalties, including imprisonment for the most egregious breaches. Bonuses for CEOs will banned unless high standards are met to protect the environment. And, importantly, the water companies will also have to start covering the costs of enforcement action.
Under the Conservatives, our rivers and waters were choked with record levels of sewage. Across High Peak in 2023, 39 sites were polluted by Severn Trent Water and United Utilities. Across these sites, we saw 2,579 sewage dumps – and what was the punishment for the bosses of those companies? Did any of them face imprisonment? Were their bonuses curtailed or stopped entirely? Did they feel the hard edge of enforcement action?
No.
In 2022, the United Utilities Chief Executive received a bonus of £1 million and Severn Trent lifted its bonuses to £3.36 million. That is millions of pounds that the people of High Peak have put in bosses’ back pockets to reward their failure.
You’d be right to think how come they got away with it? The answer is simple, because they were allowed to. The Conservatives the Tories spent fourteen years hiding from the big issues – rather than facing them head-on. This approach has left infrastructure, whether it be hospitals, schools or water infrastructure, crumbling.
The Conservatives cut the Environment Agency’s budget by half between 2010 and 2024, leaving the agency toothless to tackle the disgraceful behaviour of our water company bosses.
Unlike the last government, we will not let the water companies hide from their wrongdoing. The new law will see that all thirty-nine sites in High Peak that had sewage dumps have independent monitoring.
I will always stand up for the preservation of nature in High Peak and I am proud that the Labour Government have put into action an ambitious plan to fix our broken water system within our first six months in office. We are turning the page on years of decline and will attract much-needed investment which will preserve the beauty of High Peak and the Peak District for generations to come.
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Watching my father disappear into Alzheimer’s is something my family will never forget. It is a story that, sadly, will feel painfully familiar to so many families across High Peak.
People often say that with Alzheimer’s and dementia you lose the person twice. First, as the illness slowly robs them of the person they once were, and then again when their body finally gives up after a long and cruel battle.
As heartbreaking as that is, it is often accompanied by another burden: the constant worry about how to provide the care they need, and how that care will be paid for.
For decades, social care has been the problem every politician acknowledges but no government has truly solved. Almost everyone agrees the system is broken. Yet whenever serious reform is proposed, the debate quickly descends into scare stories, political point-scoring and accusations of “death taxes”, leaving families exactly where they started.
That has to change.
Last week, Andy Burnham said he was prepared to spend political capital on fixing social care and to work with other political parties to build the consensus needed to make lasting reform possible.
I know this is deeply personal for Andy. His own father is living with Alzheimer’s. But long before that, as Health Secretary, he argued that social care should be valued alongside healthcare as an essential part of the system, not treated as an afterthought.
For too long, social care has been the forgotten partner of the NHS.
When we think about our health service, we rightly picture doctors, nurses and hospitals. But social care is every bit as vital. It helps older people remain independent, supports disabled adults to live fulfilling lives, gives families reassurance, and frees up hospital beds by helping people return home safely when they are ready.
When social care fails, the NHS feels the consequences. Hospital beds stay occupied, ambulance queues grow longer, families are left exhausted, and vulnerable people do not receive the support they deserve.
Years of underinvestment have left providers struggling to survive, care workers undervalued despite the extraordinary job they do, and families facing impossible choices at the most difficult moments of their lives.
Getting social care right is not simply about one public service. It is about making our entire health and care system work better.
Andy has instructed that the review of social care should report much sooner, with conclusions expected by this time next year. That gives us a real opportunity to have the honest, grown-up conversation the country has avoided for far too long.
As your MP, I will work with anyone - whatever their political party - who is serious about delivering the lasting reforms families deserve.
My father’s journey with Alzheimer’s will stay with me forever. It reinforced something I have always believed: every one of us deserves to grow old with dignity. Every family deserves the confidence that, when the time comes, good care will be there without fear, uncertainty or impossible financial decisions.
We’ve talked about fixing social care for long enough. It’s time we finally did it.
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