Yvette Cooper MP: 'Happy New Year to everyone in Normanton, Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley'

This has been a year for local heroes.

The Burrow family and their phenomenal fundraising for Motor Neurone Disease have inspired everyone.

Amazing community groups from the Airedale baby bank to Pontefract Civic Society to Normanton Well Project to the Addy in Knottingley or Castleford Heritage Group have organised incredible local events bringing everyone together and worked with Wakefield Council to provide local people with vital support.

But too often those local groups have been left to pick up the pieces because the Government has let everyone down - with the deep and serious cost of living squeeze, lack of support for our towns centres, and our NHS and public services being run into the ground.

As we go into 2024 - a General Election year - the question people will be asking themselves is whether after 13 years of Tory Government they feel better off, or whether our public services and our local economy feel stronger now than they did then.

For many people across the Five Towns, the answer to all those questions is a resounding no.

More than anything else, we need change to rescue our NHS. 2023 marked the 75th anniversary of our National Health Service but after 13 years of Conservative mismanagement and austerity, many services are in a desperate state.

NHS staff are working incredibly hard but they are badly overstretched. Families across our area have contacted me appalled at their loved ones waiting for hours on trolleys in corridors in Pinderfields. Elderly residents worry about how hard it has become to see a GP in person.

New College students have told me how long it takes for friends with serious mental health problems to get an appointment. And getting to see an NHS dentist is a nightmare with half the children in our district not getting a check-up this year.

Tory MPs have started to say publicly they think the answer is to start charging people to see their GP - a shocking and disgraceful plan. If they get back in next year, the alarm bells that are already ringing over our local services will become the clanging chimes of doom for an NHS that treats people according to need rather than ability to pay.

We cannot let that happen. Our NHS is too important to let the Conservatives run it down or destroy it in this way. And it doesnt have to be like this.

Labour has set out a plan to cut waiting lists, strengthen primary care, put mental health professionals into our schools and create 700,000 more NHS dental appointments, as well as training far more doctors and nurses for the future.

As we close the year in which we celebrated 75 years of the NHS, if Labour enter government next year, our mission must be to ensure it is strong, fit for the future so it supports our children and grandchildren for the next 75 years too.

Families deserve nothing less.