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23 Oct 2025

Caroline Voaden: Where is the 'change' Labour promised?

The MP for South Devon reflects on a year under Labour rule

Caroline Voaden: Where is the 'change' Labour promised?

Rachel Reeves. Pic UK Govt

Nearly a year ago, Labour won the general election under the message of ‘change’ and since then that word has become the barometer with which to measure their time in office.

Last week’s Spending Review was the latest test. While it would be unfair to say Rachel Reeves’s speech could have been delivered by any Chancellor from the past fourteen years, it is true that the scale of change she outlined is but a fraction of what many had hoped they were voting for this time 12 months ago.

Social care is a glaring example of this absence of ambition. While the extra money announced for the NHS is welcome, the reality is this investment will be wasted if hospitals can’t discharge patients who don’t need to be there.

Until the Government grasps the nettle on social care, our NHS will continue to struggle. That means longer waits in A&E, more people struggling to see a GP or dentist, and thousands left without the care they desperately need.

The Government must commit to concluding its commission into social care by the end of this year, so that long-overdue reforms can be implemented with the urgency this crisis demands. People should not have to continue suffering due to years of dithering and delay.

Another area where ambition was sorely lacking was in the distribution of transport and infrastructure investment. In the build up to the Spending Review, much was made of the billions of pounds of investment going to the Midlands and the North, but, as the days got closer, there was one glaring omission from the pre-speech news: the South West.

In fact, in the week before the Spending Review, I reminded the Chief Secretary of the Treasury that the South West doesn’t begin and end in Bristol. He assured me the Government was aware of this.

It turned out he was right. When the Spending Review came, it was clear the Government believes the South West isn’t solely Bristol but Swindon too.

Aside from these two locations, there was very little in the Chancellor’s statement for the South West, and virtually nothing for the rural areas within it. Funding for transport for rural areas was just a seventh of that offered to city regions.

This is deeply disappointing. The number of bus journeys in Devon has fallen by 40 per cent since 2015, and in many areas of South Devon, communities have been left behind by unreliable, infrequent, or inadequate bus services.

Investing in rural transport won’t just alleviate today’s pressures; it will build tomorrow’s workforce. Ireland has shown us what is possible: rural bus use there has increased fivefold since 2018 after the Irish Government invested in rural transport and created new services where they were needed.

If you were to press the Government on why social care was hardly mentioned in the Spending Review or why rural areas lost out on funding, I’m sure you could guess at their response. They’d point to the sorry state of the public finances, and specifically, the £22bn hole left by the Tories.

The Conservatives' damage to our economy shouldn’t be underestimated, but since July, Labour has avoided some decisions that could have lifted us out of the hole dug by the last government.

Negotiating a bespoke UK-EU customs union is the single biggest thing the Government could do to boost growth and fix the public finances. Increasing the tax paid by social media giants or reversing the Conservatives giveaway to big banks are two other ways of raising the money needed to deliver the change voters were desperate for at the last election.

All three options are available to the Government, but nearly a year in, they haven’t taken them. Instead, we’ve had 12 months of missed opportunity after missed opportunity to give the people a clean break with the neglect of the last Conservative Government.

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