New Year statement from Chris Naylor

2024 looks to be a key year for the UK and for the planet.

As a practical kinda guy, here in the UK I’m hoping:

•     Inflation at last comes back down to our agreed 2% target, so families are more financially secure;
•     Government finally agrees a phased deal for junior doctors, so more NHS medics stay here;
•     Water companies start investing properly in saving our rivers, rather than just doing the minimum.

Internationally I of course hope:

•     Our awful conflicts, in Ukraine and in Palestine, are somehow resolved, or at least fire is ceased;
•     The crucial aspirations of COP28 are faced up to globally, not parked or ignored.

It’s a year of elections too - almost half the world’s population, across dozens of countries - which I hope reinforces humanity’s remarkable ability to embrace peaceful debate and change. Here in the UK you’d expect me to say - as Liberal Democrat - that I feel change is in the air. No political party can remain in power for decades without losing vision and ideas. And this government’s increasing rate of changing Prime Ministers surely shows it's struggling for stability and competence too. But it’ll be up to voters, not me, to decide.

It seems recent months have flagged serious issues of competence all too often:

• National Insurance tax cuts, when last month government borrowed £14.3 billion - surely cutting taxes before the books balance is fiscally irresponsible?
• Cancelling most of HS2, when already tens of £billions have been spent and ancient woodlands destroyed - why take 10 years to realise the project was massively overpriced?
• Cutting back agreed school budgets because of a Department for Education error - what about all the eager pupils now facing larger class sizes? and the teachers now facing the axe?

So surely it's time for change, and I would say for all those in parliament who’ve been part of government - whether supporters of Boris Johnson, or Liz Truss, or Rishi Sunak - to be held to account, to explain the awful incompetence of recent years.

I’m very much hoping that by the end of 2024 we’ll have a new government - new ideas, fresh vision, real principles and values again. I’ll be arguing for compassion and community as well as competence.

I’ll be calling for a renewal of faith in our cherished NHS, and a new programme to cut our ever-mounting waiting lists - doubled in the last five years - by using NHS staff and operating theatres more at weekends, rather than paying private clinics over the odds.

I’ll be calling for more help - advice and money - to support farmers here in the transition to sustainable, regenerative agriculture, while continuing crucially to feed the nation.

I’ll be calling for a ‘Curriculum for Life’ in schools so that our young people embark on adult life equipped for day-to-day practical challenges - looking after their health, managing their finances, knowing about housing - as well as to flourish in their chosen skills and studies.

Living in the heart of South Shropshire as I do, as a Lib Dem I very much want to help make that change. Listening to and working with voters; representing them in Parliament and in Shropshire too of course; to serve and not to be served.