Hope again: what the Prime Minister's speech means for Blackpool

Blackpool is a town that has been told to expect less for a very long time. We've been the end of the line in more ways than one. But we are a town with huge resilience and enormous potential, and since I was elected I've been fighting for our town to get the resources it needs to thrive.

We've made a fantastic start with over £100m of targeted investment in our town secured since Labour came into power, but money alone won't fix things. We need to fix the systems that have been left broken for too long. So when the Prime Minister stood up at the party conference in Liverpool and said "hope comes from honesty", I understood exactly what he meant.

A radical plan for social care

At the heart of the Prime Minister's speech was a radical plan for social care. I know Andy has been thinking about it since he was health secretary under Gordon Brown in 2009/10. I remember discussing it with him when he visited Blackpool at the time, and again when he visited on the day of the Labour manifesto launch in 2024.

Now he has finally been able to present his vision for a National Care Service: free at the point of use, with no care charges paid out of the basic state pension. It will protect people's homes and savings and will be built on the same principle as the NHS, where everyone contributes and everyone is covered. He was honest that it will take time, but this is the real work that needs doing, with no more tinkering at the edges of a broken system.

It's important to Blackpool, where around 40% of residents are aged 50 or over. These are people who have paid in all their lives and are scared to get old and watch their savings disappear. The Prime Minister spoke about his own gran, whose modest savings, built up over a lifetime, were all taken to pay for care. There are thousands of families in Blackpool with a story like that.

He also spoke to the people who hold the whole system together, having lost his own father recently and seen close up the hard work of low-paid care workers. He told them: "You are not invisible to me. I see you”. We have thousands of care workers in this town, doing skilled and exhausting work that deserves proper recognition and pay.

Fixing the social care system of course benefits everyone, as we all hope to get old, but it will help right now too. Our broken care system means people are stuck in hospital when they should be at home. By fixing care, we will take enormous pressure off our hospital.

Beyond social care, Andy set out a vision for a better country and a better Blackpool, with quality housing, clean seas and more opportunities for young people among his priorities.

Tackling the housing crisis

This government has already made progress on the housing crisis. The Renters' Rights Act ended no-fault evictions from 1 May this year, so private renters in Blackpool no longer live with the fear of losing their home at short notice. Awaab's Law is already holding social landlords to account on damp and mould, and the biggest investment in social housing in a generation is under way, with a new era of council housebuilding led by Angela Rayner.

The Prime Minister rightly pointed out that we must now go further. Councils will get stronger powers to compulsorily purchase homes where landlords refuse to make improvements, and to take over empty properties and rent them out cheaply to families. The right to buy will be reformed so new-build council homes are protected for 35 years, giving councils the confidence to build again, and young people will be able to get on the housing ladder with a much smaller deposit.

Cleaning up our coast

I've spent two years campaigning for United Utilities to clean up its act and stop pumping sewage into our seas. This government has already introduced new powers to ban bonuses for polluting water bosses and impose tougher penalties. The Prime Minister is now going further. The government will bring forward a strengthened Water Bill, with the Thatcher-era ban on public ownership of water companies repealed, so that if a company keeps failing, public control is a real option. Local areas will get new powers to hold water companies to account, and the loopholes behind excessive bonuses will be closed. It's the start of a ten-year journey, but it's a real one, and it matters enormously to Blackpool, where our coastline is a vital part of our economy and our identity.

Investing in young people

We've already begun to tackle the barriers facing young people by introducing the Youth Guarantee and reforms to get Britain working. The Prime Minister has pledged to go further and rebuild a system of comprehensive education with parity between academic and technical studies, a massive work placement programme, more apprenticeships and the right support for young people when they need it. I know how much talent and potential Blackpool’s young people have and, with a government that backs them, their futures will be transformed.

Hope again

I took a lot away from Andy's conference speech, but at the heart of it was a real sense that this is a prime minister who's willing to put his neck on the line for the good of the country. Andy pointed out that he's the seventh Prime Minister in ten years. Too often, a change of leader has meant new slogans masking the same broken system.

Andy said clearly that he may pay a political price, but that someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off. That's a Prime Minister who has looked at the problems that have defeated every government for a generation and decided to fix them anyway. He came back into Westminster, he said, not because he'd missed it, but to change it.

None of this will happen overnight, and I'll keep holding the government to account, but for too long the message to towns like ours has been: wait your turn. This speech says something different. It builds on what we've already done, and it says Blackpool matters. The basics of a good life, a home, care in old age, quality education and a stable job, should be there for everyone.

That's something to believe in and something to give us all hope again.