MNHQ here: do you think Westminster politicians understand your life?

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We at MNHQ have been undertaking a project with the research consultancy Britain Thinks to find out what mothers across the UK think about how the last year has gone - and what they think politicians should focus on as we (hopefully) emerge from the COVID crisis.

You can see some of the findings here and some coverage in the i newspaper here.

Headlines from the survey we conducted with MNers include:

86% said they felt politicians across all parties are out of touch with the realities of everyday life for ordinary families;
73% say they are ‘concerned about the opportunities my local area offers for young people’;
64% say they feel pessimistic about job opportunities in their local area; and
43% are pessimistic about their children’s future prospects (things like job opportunities and home ownership).

In the focus groups we did with mothers in 'Red Wall' seats across England and Wales, the issue about concern for local areas came through really strongly.

So we'd love to know: what's the one thing you'd like your MP (or your council) to do that would improve your local area? Could be something to do with the physical environment (parks, green spaces), services (youth clubs, children's centres), transport, jobs, or anything else that takes your fancy - what would be on your wishlist?

Thanks
MNHQ

God where to start?

Stop trying to prop up house prices and build build build! House prices are a complete joke relative to earnings. I fear that my children will live in cramped, crowded housing as adults, unable to afford a decent home. House prices need to fall in real terms to allow money that's currently tied up in asset values to be spent more usefully in the wider economy.

A nationwide program to improve wraparound and holiday care options for working parents. Even an acknowledgement that covering 12 weeks of school holiday with 4 weeks of annual leave is impossible would be nice.

Very locally? Increase the number of special schools so children arent shipped out of county to access education

More generally for the region. Traffic.

Transport investment please. More trains and buses.

Honestly? I don’t imagine they have a bloody clue. Nor do they look like they care. It’s all Jobs For The Boys, lining their own pockets, & lining up jobs for after they’re out of office. Barely a single one of them has ever had to experience what it’s like living on a low wage or on benefits.

Have a few of them do that. Experience life as someone on benefits does. With the same budget, resources, opportunities etc. Not just for a day, but longer, like a couple of months. While still working. Then tell us that Universal Credit is working properly.

My local MP doesn’t want to know. Typical Tory, he toes the party line on everything.

Resign. Our MP is a disgrace.

He's a Tory and doesn't possess a single shred of decency. Just a yes man for Johnson.

Don't allow people to own more than one property. How the fuck can families afford homes when half of them are owned by people who have somewhere to live and just want to gouge the property market? Stop building on our green spaces and free up actual properties and make them affordable. Plough money into education and SEN and mental health and the NHS. Make this country somewhere safe and pleasant to live and stop doing favours for your mates.

Yes to stop artificially bolstering house prices.

Also stop using "accidental leaks" to the media to gauge public opinion. For all parties, have your own convictions to follow through on policies you actually believe in instead of being buffeted by the winds of populism.

Actually do something about racism in this country. The Government really showed how much they do not care what poc are facing on a daily basis here. My local MP was totally useless and could not even be bothered to show any support for Black people during the BLM marches. Not a single word speaking out against racism in her column in the local paper. Even when it was reported that children had been racially assaulted, she said nothing. Not good enough. I will remember this, as will plenty of other people, when it comes to voting time.

I forgot to add, my MP is a Tory.

A simple thing that the government could do to help the economy, and the safety (or fear of lack of it) for women would be to stop putting the clocks back in winter. For those in factories and offices, being able to leave work in daylight for much more of the time, especially in the south and west of the UK.

More support for working parents. If I were still in my old (professional) job I would've had to go part-time due to no flexibility, otherwise DH would've had to do pickup and drop off and that's not feasible. Similarly, the cost of childcare. A friend has just had her second baby, one parent with a decent salary and one on NMW, so to my mind they should be financially secure if not rolling in it, but they can't afford two full-time childcare slots.

I'm in NI and the extent to which childcare was ignored in the plans to open up after the first lockdown was horrific. We were waiting ages for confirmation of the phase that applied.

Generally watching the news i don't think most politicians have a clue about the number of families in working poverty and the issues they face. A few hours a week reading on here would do them no harm.

Of course they don’t. They don’t know and they don’t give a damn either. It’s one life for them and another for us plebs. Locally other than resigning (although that wouldn’t help as we’d just get another Tory anyway), I’d like to see more investment in my local town centre which is basically the poor man’s completely and obviously deliberately neglected bit of an otherwise wealthy county. If I can add a second I’d love to see more leisure opportunities for young people in particular (but actually also adults). Then a third would be decent public transport that runs on time (and has those signs at bus shelters like they have in London telling you if the bus is running behind schedule and by how much, and also when the next one is due), is frequent enough to be useful and is as cheap as it is in London. And has more variety of routes.

I live in a village in Leicestershire. This area is represented by a Tory MP, and is one of the safest Tory seats outside the South-East. Our MP is a former management consultant from London who has zero connections with Leicestershire. He is a ‘high-flyer’ who was parachuted into an ultra-safe seat, and will probably be in the cabinet in a few years. He could not possibly be any less interested in his constituency because he has bigger fish to fry and he knows he will always be re-elected.

And people wonder why politicians are out of touch....

Politicians have NO IDEA about my life
Like a pp, I would not know where to start

Conversely do we understand their lives?

Ban second homes. No citizen should have the power that renting to others gives an individual. Build many many more houses. Allow the property market to collapse. All houses built must be affordable.

Ban Cars. Ugly stinking things, people all feeling they need two per household, cluttering the streets up, making a racket and stinking. Our poor kids lungs. Costing too much and making people lazy and fat too.

Open the swimming centers and soft play centers and never close them again please.

Stop propping up pointless worthless jobs. Investing small grants to people with worthless business ideas stops that money going to useful community projects. Social enterprise was/could again be a pretty great thing.

Oh and police. More of them and trained more sensitively. On the beat, in the station, responding to emergencies faster. I don't want to see anymore breaking, muggings, stabbings and the drunk and disorderly homeless alcoholics and drug addicts need to be put somewhere more permanently ( I no longer care where to be honest!) and kept away from town centers and young families, not dumped in my neighbourhood from every corner of the country.

Get rid of corruption in local authorities, and other overseeing bodies. Although I can see you're already trying to do that, so well done and please keep going!

@Iveputmyselfonthenaughtystep

Don't allow people to own more than one property. How the fuck can families afford homes when half of them are owned by people who have somewhere to live and just want to gouge the property market? Stop building on our green spaces and free up actual properties and make them affordable. Plough money into education and SEN and mental health and the NHS. Make this country somewhere safe and pleasant to live and stop doing favours for your mates.

Couldn't have put it better myself! Building more houses and ruining our rapidly depleting green spaces is not the answer when so many houses stand empty most of the year.

Local council - I am a single mum who has no family support and my ex does not see his children. When calculating council tax they need to not take into account the 85% I get back on daycare costs. If I didn’t need to pay for daycare they would reduce my council tax but because I work and pay a huge price for daycare I have to pay the full amount of council tax. So I earn less and pay more. It makes working not worth it to me. I appealed and lost. I know English councils don’t take refunded daycare costs into account when calculating council tax so why does ours?

MPs - study how many women lost jobs during the pandemic due to lack of affordable daycare and make improvements to the system.

Social housing stock! It's one of the things that keeps me awake at night. We were 2 weeks from actually being homeless several years ago. It took me having a completely humiliating breakdown in the council offices that got me, disabled DP and at the time 10yo DS housed with a private landlord willing to take housing benefit. I dread the day when we need to move again.

Stop being a yes man with no thoughts of his own.

Stop being a hypocrite who votes against the provision of free meals during lockdown for fsm children and then have the audacity to contact a local cafe who provided free meals asking to visit them and be pictured handing over a free meal. They said no

The Buy to Let industry is out of control.
I live in an area with relatively few job opportunities and hardly any graduate places.
Thousands upon thousands of new homes have been/being built in my area that are all billed as 'luxury detached 3/4/5 bedroomed housed' which cost a fortune yet hardly any affordable properties are being built. I now of only a small block of flats near our hospital for key workers and another near a fruit farm. Both are ugly, plain, utilitarian builds.
Huge numbers of these new builds are being bought up by landlords and are then rented off at much-higher-than-mortgage prices . Young couples and families are trapped as they can't get mortgages yet are unable to save due to sky high rents.
Councils need funding to build decent council housing, not to just provide accommodation for those made homeless.

Families are being broken up by underprivileged folk being sent off to cheaper counties to live in as the cap on housing benefit is too low in many areas .

Then you see MPs flip-flopping their main-second properties in order to get all decorating/refurbishments done by the tax payer to both of their properties.

Don't even get me started on Priti Patel's expense list!

Childcare. They don't understand what it's like to try and work and pay extortionate childcare fees or just manage work around nursery or school hours.