Lucy Rigby

By Lucy Rigby lucyrigby

Firefighters are some of our most valued public servants, and for good reason. Their job involves great personal risk to protect all of us. With their colleagues in the other emergency services, they are the first to head to danger on our behalf. They ensure our city is a safe place to live and to work.

At present, Conservative-run Lincolnshire County Council is proposing to make serious cuts to our local fire services. To the tune of £1.23 million in fact. The proposals are not in the interests of our city and will doubtless make Lincoln residents less safe.

If the proposals are implemented, it is reported that there will be fewer frontline firefighters and jobs will be lost. Response times will be lengthened. It could take up to 5 minutes more for firefighters to arrive at the scene of a fire.

It may not sound a lot but 5 minutes can make a genuine and real difference in an emergency situation. Especially if you add to this the impact of Lincoln’s level crossings and frequent traffic congestion – there is a reason, after all, that Lincoln North station was built in the first place.

Crew numbers would also apparently be reduced, as would the number of full-time staff on duty at night, which would doubtless put our firefighters under increased pressure. At a time when our city is growing in size and more properties are being built, these cuts move our local fire service in entirely the wrong direction. Reducing capacity in these circumstances is just not sensible.

For our firefighters themselves, all this is of on the back of the deeply unfair changes to their well-earned pensions, recently forced on them by the government. We know this government is no fan of public sector workers and firefighters have suffered just as much, if not more, than most. The government has repeatedly refused to talk constructively with firefighters in relation to their pensions, which has led to unnecessary conflict. There have been 47 separate periods of strike action by firefighters in England since September 2013 and the blame for this must be clearly laid at the door of the government.

For these reasons, I am giving my support to the campaign to protect our local fire services from the county council’s short-sighted and ill-considered cuts. Just as in relation to their deeply unpopular slashing of our county’s libraries, the county council have got it wrong. They should consider the best interests of our city and think again.

Lucy Rigby is Lincoln Labour's candidate to be the city's next MP. She is a solicitor and lives in central Lincoln.

By Lucy Rigby lucyrigby

Every year, mental health problems will affect one in four of us in Lincoln – that’s more than either heart disease or cancer. This fact alone ought to mean mental health is at the very centre of our approach to healthcare now and for years to come. The level of improvement required is considerable: we need nothing short of a revolution in our attitudes to mental health conditions and to seeking treatment if we are to see the kind of change that is necessary.

Yet as demand for support is rising, mental health services are in crisis. Funding is falling and a staggering 75% of people with a mental health problem are not any receiving treatment at all. Partly as a result we are seeing increases in prescriptions for antidepressants, the number of people being sectioned and, tragically, the number of people who take their own lives.

According to the leading mental health charity, Mind, in England alone the cost of mental health problems in terms of treatment, loss of earnings and welfare is approximately £105 billion a year. The situation is a desperate one and action is needed.

Firstly we need to tackle the taboo and the stigma that is – unbelievably – still attached to mental health in this country.

A great deal of good work in this area has already been done – not least down to celebrities such as Marcus Trescothick, Stephen Fry, Fiona Phillips and Alastair Campbell sharing their experiences in public. Their bravery encourages us all but more needs to be done to help us reach the position where talking about depression and anxiety is just as acceptable as talking about a bad back.

Secondly, we need to recognise the importance of mental health in terms of NHS structures. That’s why it’s fantastic that Ed Miliband has committed to putting mental health at the heart of our vision for an integrated health and social care system, to ensure that it gets the focus and attention it so desperately needs.

Part of this process means properly integrating physical and mental health services and see both as equal partners, alongside social care, within the new vision of ‘whole person care’. It’s a very outdated idea that mental and physical health are completely separate and should be dealt with as such – the reality is that many people with physical health problems may suffer related mental issues, and vice versa.

Thirdly, mental health services require help to recover from their assault by this Government. Since 2010, available mental health support has gone drastically downhill. Services have been cut and, according to Mind, they’ve actually been cut faster and deeper than other areas of health.

Support systems that help people stay well, including community or voluntary activities, advice services – and of course benefits – have also been cut. Funding has been squeezed, the number of specialist doctors and nurses has dropped and more and more vulnerable people are not getting the help that they need. This is non-sensical not just in terms of addressing need but also from a financial point of view – early intervention and better treatment of mental health conditions would benefit the economy and the taxpayer. The sheer scale of the mental health problems currently affecting our society means that tackling this vitally important area has to be a priority both for the next government and for all of us.

Lucy Rigby is Lincoln Labour's candidate to be the city's next MP. She is a solicitor and lives in central Lincoln.