Sustainable Communities Bill

The United Kingdom is a nation of rich diversity. We can be proud that its regions, towns and cities have their own specific characteristics. Our diversity, while we maintain our United Kingdom, defines us as a nation. However, the growing trend of globalisation presents us with many local and national challenges. It is at a local level that a true sense of community can best be achieved. Community is the bedrock on which our society is formed and we carry forward that principle with every policy that we make. We remain the only people who are true to the principle of inclusion: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. In the modern world, a sense of community is more important than ever in our society. A strong sense of local community is also essential to tackle the problems of social exclusion. The Government can be proud of their achievements in that area. We have retained our commitment to it, despite the Opposition’s claims that such interest in the well-being of our society is merely a gimmick designed to grab short-term headlines. Since 1997, we have consistently moved the problems of social exclusion further up the political agenda. It is only due to our Government that we now have a Minister for Social Exclusion, which shows that we have a modern Government working with the needs of a modern society. Our Government have already done much to develop the idea of community in our society. Since 1997, local government has received a 39 per cent. real terms increase in investment, the result of which can be seen throughout my constituency through the renewal of children’s play areas, the relaying of pavements to increase accessibility to our footpaths for the disabled, and the development of an efficient environmentally friendly bus service throughout the whole constituency. Such efforts and commitments made by Labour councils and our Labour Government will enable communities to be sustainable in the years and decades to come.