Ed Miliband quizzed on Labour’s plan to make gains in outer London

Evening Standard

Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband MP was out campaigning in Chipping Barnet on May 16. Miliband was quizzed on Labour’s plan to make gains in outer London.

Transcript

00:00I think that London wants change. I think after 14 years of the Conservatives I

00:07think people are feeling it, feeling the country has gone backwards when it comes

00:11to the NHS, when it comes to our schools, when it comes to

00:16massive issues around antisocial behaviour and they want to see change in

00:22our country and what we're offering is very concrete first steps that a Labour

00:27government would put in place which will benefit people in London, more teachers,

00:32more appointments in the NHS to reduce waiting times and waiting lists, GB Energy

00:39the area that I'm responsible for which would work with people, work with the

00:45Mayor in Sadiq to cut people's energy bills, so concrete practical first steps

00:51all costed built on a platform of stability and I think you know I look

00:56forward to getting out including here in Chipping Barnet talk to people about

01:00what we're offering. The majority here in Chipping Barnet is very small, places

01:04like this should be a walk in the park for you? Look my experience of general

01:08elections is nothing is a walk in the park and we take nothing for granted. We

01:13have an excellent candidate here in Dan Tomlinson who's a local resident, an

01:17economist, somebody who's going to really work hard for the area. I think we have a

01:21really important message about the change we want to bring to this country

01:25and the change we want to bring in London, working with Sadiq and but we take

01:31absolutely nothing for granted. When you're looking at seats like this what

01:34lessons are there to learn from the Uxbridge by-election last year?

01:37Well look I think the mayoral election is the most recent election we've seen

01:44where we saw swings to Sadiq both in in a London and out of London and I

01:51think that's really really important but a mayoral election, a local election, a

01:57by-election is different from a general election. In a general election people

02:01are choosing their government and they're choosing what happens on

02:04national issues like health and education, the funding of the police,

02:10energy, economic stability, growth, all of those issues and that's that's what we're

02:15going to be fighting on and obviously it's about us working with Sadiq but

02:21I think the fundamentals of this I think are that people recognise it's time

02:26for a change in our country and that's what Labour will bring. On the way over here

02:30past a Ulez camera which had been defaced, do you think the salience of

02:34Ulez has faded as a political issue? I think that Ulez was clearly an issue in

02:39the mayoral election and the people of London made their choice which was to

02:43re-elect Sadiq for a historic third term. I think the issues at the general

02:49election will not be about that. I think the issues of the general election will be

02:53about all of those issues. When people can't get a GP appointment, when people

02:58are stuck on an NHS waiting list, eight million people stuck on an NHS waiting

03:02list, when people are seeing their energy bills go through the roof, when they're

03:06seeing teachers being cut from local schools, they're asking how do we change

03:11this and the way we change this is by changing the national government and

03:14that's what Labour is offering at this election.

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