Poverty

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 6:22 pm on 23 January 1992.

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Photo of Ashok Kumar Ashok Kumar , Langbaurgh 6:22, 23 January 1992

I have been told from the Front Bench to wrap it up.

In conclusion, I have to say that, as a Member of Parliament representing an area where poverty is an inescapable fact of daily life and not merely a subject for a college lecture theatre, I am deeply and utterly angered by the conditions in which far too many of my constituents have to live. I am deeply angered too by the disinterested and offhand treatment meted out to the poor by the present Government. I have seen too much silent suffering, too many families faced with disintegration, to treat this matter as an idle debating foil.

The poorest in our society need a Labour Government. They need a Labour Government who recognise the importance of ordinary human needs; they need a Labour Government who have the insight, the ability and the muscle to change things for the better and to aid their own community in its task of mapping out its destiny. They need, above everything else, the knowledge that they can come out from the shadows to which they have been consigned by 13 years of Tory heartlessness and indifference.