Labour pledges to back coastal communities

The next Labour government will address the ‘grotesque inequality and poverty’ that is blighting coastal communities as a result of Conservative cuts.

That his according to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who used a visit to Hastings to promise that Labour members across the country will launch ‘the biggest people-powered campaign’ this country has ever seen ‘as soon as the Prime Minister Boris Johnson obeys the law and takes No Deal off the table’.

Recent analysis shows that workers living in seaside areas in Great Britain earn on average £1,600 less per year than those living inland. Last year alone, food banks in Hastings distributed 87,453 meals, and it is predicted that by the time Universal Credit is fully rolled out approximately one in five adults living in the region will be on Universal Credit. In government, Labour will scrap Universal Credit and immediately introduce a package of emergency measures to end its worst aspects, including the benefit cap, the two child limit, punitive sanctions regime and the five week wait for an initial payment.

Corbyn said: “Hastings, like so many other held back coastal communities, has been blighted by the grotesque inequality and poverty caused by nine years of vicious austerity and Tory cuts. Poverty and inequality is not inevitable. In the fifth richest country in the world no one should be forced to rely on a foodbank to feed their family, no one should be sleeping rough on our streets and nobody should be working for poverty wages.

“Labour will end the evil of in-work poverty and the next Labour government will end the need for food banks. We will completely transform the way our economy works by bringing in a Real Living Wage of at least £10 per hour, ending the inhumane and barbaric Universal Credit, cap rents, building a million genuinely affordable homes and delivering the biggest extension of rights for workers our country has ever seen to tip power away from bosses and into the hands of the people.  

“We have a once-in-a generation chance to rebuild and transform our country. As soon as Johnson obeys the law and takes No Deal off the table, we are ready to launch the biggest people-powered campaign this country has ever seen to deliver a Labour government that will deliver the real change that our country needs.”