Dear Birtley and Lamesley Residents,

I had the great privilege of being your Member of Parliament (for Blaydon) for 12 years from 2005.

During that time I was proud to belong to a party that had introduced the Minimum Wage, brought peace to Northern Ireland and trebled spending on our NHS.

Locally we saw £360 million spent on improving homes, the building of a walk-in centre in Blaydon, and an Urgent Care Centre at the QE.

We should have had £80 million to rebuild our local schools but, following our defeat in 2010, the Tory/Lib Dem coalition clawed the money back from us.

That was just a start, and in the last 14 years we've seen huge job losses across all our public services, pay freezes, benefit cuts, the introduction of the bedroom tax, Partygate, the PPE scandal, Liz Truss' disastrous period in No 10, and now we are all affected by a huge drop in our living standards.

At this election we face a huge challenge: more of the same with Rishi Sunak, or change for the better with Keir Starmer.

If you, like most of Britain, are desperate for change then I urge you to cast your vote for Sharon Hodgson, the Labour candidate in our area.

I worked with Sharon for many years in Unison, Britain's biggest trade union representing the public service workers who keep this country running.

We started in Parliament together in 2005 and Sharon has never lost her passion for our part of the world, always staying true to her roots and never shrinking from a fight!

She will do us proud!

Vote for Change!  Vote for Labour!  Vote for Sharon!

Dave Anderson (Former MP for Blaydon, 2005 - 2017)