'50 Key Achievements'

Party Conference offers a valuable opportunity for all Labour people.

It is still very odd to queue up for a cup of tea and find that the Foreign Secretary is standing next to you. Yet that is the joy of party conferences. They remain one of the most democratic parts of our political system - in a true sense that everyone has to go through the hassles, the queues and the waiting.

The danger od course is that the people at the party conference become divorced from the wider world.

I spent three days at Labour conference in Bournemouth.

Ministers, MPs, local Party members alike all came together to discuss what it means to be a Labour supporter, what Labour stands for now and what our future goals should be to make Britain with Labour an even better place to be, with even more doctors and nurses in a revitalised ever improving NHS, more police making our streets even safer, new measures to tackle anti-social behaviour, ever improving exam results, and ever reducing child poverty, unemployment and crime rates.

But more importantly, Conference offers the chance for Labour to think about what a Labour Government means to the people who really count - not Party member, not MPs, not Ministers, and not even our Prime Minister himself, Tony Blair - but the ordinary man in the street, whose life is affected in ways both big and small by Labour policies.

I did not speak on the conference floor but talked to delegates and debated points at fringe meetings. I came away convinced that we have to do more to bridge the gap between the political debate at national level and real people's lives. In the end that is what counts.

So at Labour conference on the big screen we were told that there are about 1.5 million more people in work than six years ago. In South Shields long term youth unemployment is down by 75%. Yet how much is this debated? Not much.

In our health service there are 50,000 more nurses and 10,000 more doctors. Investment into the NHS is increasing year on year.

In South Tyneside, this has meant the building of a new, state of the art Maternity Unit at South Tyneside General Hospital, and the investment of £617,000 in new, modern Accident and Emergency services

Meanwhile tax and benefit reforms mean that we have taken ground breaking steps to raise living standards for our children, by raising Child Benefit from £5 to £16.05, and introducing such initiatives as Sure Start and Child and Working Tax Credit.

6600 families benefit from Child and Working Tax Credit in South Shields alone

Yet change can be painfully slow. Statistics do not change lives on their own. And when the national political debate is dominated by personalities to the exclusion of issues it is little wonder people turn off politics.

Putting it right is why I write these columns, hold open meetings and answer letters and emails. Politics matter - but unless people are involved it withers. I would always prefer people to vote for someone else than not vote at all - because when they don't vote they are giving a vote of no confidence in the whole political process.

I came out of party conference energised by the ideas and commitment I saw not just from the leading politicians but from the ordinary members of the party. People came from their communities and spoke out about their needs. That is what politics is all about.