 I am proud to have served as Darlington’s MP since 1992.
The town has changed markedly since then. The town centre has been redeveloped and pedestrianised. Old industries have gone and new jobs have arrived. New housing has come to areas like Faverdale and Haughton and new business parks have shot up in places like Morton Palms.
When I first became MP in 1992, Darlington, like much of the North East, was feeling the effects of economic recession and sky high interest rates. Home repossessions hit 431. Unemployment stood at 4365. Fifteen years later there are 5500 more homeowners in Darlington and unemployment has fallen by 62%.  I feel proud to have been part of a Labour government that has made such a difference in Darlington. I am particularly pleased with the money I have been able to win for Darlington’s schools and colleges over recent years. That £590.4 million has given the town 9 new schools and a new Darlington College. This is an investment in the future that is helping to transform educational opportunities in Darlington. Before long there will be a new Academy at Eastbourne and I am working with headteachers, the council and employers to ensure that standards keep rising in all of Darlington’s schools.
In 1992 waiting lists in the area stood at 21,717 patients. Today they are 14,959. Then people could wait for up to 18 months for an operation. Today nobody waits more than 18 weeks. There are 1,559 new nurses and 205 new doctors, 3 new GP surgeries and 3 surgeries with grants for building work. And the campaign that I led means that Darlington kept its own primary care trust so that decisions on local services can be taken locally.
 Similarly, I helped lead efforts to give Darlington its own unitary local authority so that services could be decided in the town hall not at county hall. Since we have had a Labour council locally working alongside a Labour government nationally, Darlington has really moved forward.
Crime has fallen by 21%. I led a successful campaign to change our country’s murder laws after the horrific killing of local man Michael Gibson. And I have helped win extra funding to fight crime locally. There are 255 more police officers and Darlington was one of the first towns in the country to pioneer CCTV and community support officers. Local estates have been revitalised. The same is happening with local roads, with the most recent example being the £14 million Eastern Transport Corridor which I lobbied Ministers to support.
 Darlington has benefited from a national drive to tackle poverty and widen opportunity. The minimum wage is helping 60,000 in the North-East and tax credits are helping 9,900 people in the town escape poverty pay. There are 200 more students going to college in Darlington and 400 more from the town going to university. Pensioner poverty has fallen by 14%. And child poverty has fallen by 3%thanks in part to the investment that is taking place in childcare services in the town. Today 2,300 youngsters get free nursery education.
So Darlington is on the up. I have always believed that the town has lots going for it – a strong sense of community, a good quality of life, an excellent location, some great companies and a workforce renowned for skill and commitment. A lot of progress has been made in the last decade but there is more to do to realise that potential and tackle some long-standing problems. That is why earlier this year I kick-started a process through the Darlington Partnership to look at what we needed to do as a town to meet the challenges that lie ahead.
 For example, having succeeded in getting more jobs in the town we now need to ensure that they are of higher quality and offer better pay. With more prosperity and more car ownership we need to tackle growing traffic congestion and do more to improve the local environment. With local health services improving we must act to close the health inequality gap that means people live on average 13 years less in the Lingfield area than in Park West ward.
People involved in that process came from the local community, local businesses and from all the main parties. You can see the results at http://www.darlington.org.uk/. I am now working with the Partnership, the council, police, NHS and business and community representatives to draw up an action plan to take the town forward over the next ten years. I believe it is right to be ambitious for Darlington. It is a great place. A lot of progress has been made in the town over the last ten years. Now we need to meet the challenges of the next ten so that it becomes even better.
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