Labour MP Josh MacAlister and Cumberland Council education lead Cllr Elaine Lynch are urging local schools to sign up to join the 750 school ‘early adopter’ rollout of the government’s new free breakfast club programme – and support local children to start the school day ready to learn.

Families in Cumberland will soon be able to access 30 minutes of quality childcare ahead of the start of the school day as the government pushes ahead with free breakfast clubs across the country.   

Schools in Cumberland can apply to become one of 750 early adopters in the government’s free breakfast club roll out, with clubs to launch from April 2025.  

Cllr Elaine Lynch said:

“Free breakfast clubs are great for parents, great for kids, and great for our economy too. 

“Labour’s breakfast clubs will make a huge difference for families in Cumberland – they make it easier for busy mums and dads to make the time for work and dropping off the kids, they ensure children don’t start school hungry, and they help families with the cost of living too.

“I strongly encourage local schools to apply.” 

Breakfast clubs in every primary school will make a huge difference to children, families, and schools – removing barriers to opportunity by helping children learn, making sure no child starts school hungry, and helping families with the cost of childcare around the school day, to help keep money in people’s pockets.

More than 2 in 5 non-working mothers say that they would prefer to work if they could arrange good quality, convenient, reliable and affordable childcare, and over half of parents say they have problems finding formal childcare for their child that is flexible enough to fit their needs.  

The breakfast clubs form part of the government’s mission to break the unfair link between background and opportunity. Delivering change that can be felt by working people, early adopters will offer all children at their school access to a free breakfast and at least 30 minutes of free before school childcare, every day.

This action to kick-start the programme comes fast after theBudget, which tripled investment in breakfast clubs to over £33 million for 2025-26, supporting the early adopter scheme as well as the continuation of theNational School Breakfast Club Programme next year, so no child faces a cliff edge on current provision.   

Whitehaven and Workington MP Josh MacAlister said: 

“Labour was elected to change Britain and this is exactly what that means. This is a huge opportunity for local schools to get in early and start reaping the benefits of free breakfast clubs from April next year. 

“From helping with flexible working for families, to improving behaviour and attendance, the supportive start to the day that breakfast clubs provide will help drive high and rising standards for every child. This government is delivering change that will make a real difference to families up and down the country.” 

Schools that become early adopters will have the unique opportunity to shape the future of the national breakfast club policy, contributing directly to its implementation.  

The wider paid-for wraparound childcare offer – for all primary children to be able to access childcare between 8am-6pm – continues to roll out across the country. 

The government is also developing an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty and give children the best start in life, which will be published in spring. The Taskforce led by the Work and Pensions Secretary and Education Secretary are looking at all available levers across government to drive forward short-term and long-term actions to reduce child poverty.

Immigration is one of the top issues raised with me on doorsteps across West Cumbria week in, week out. I want to take this opportunity to update you on the approach we’re taking to fix our broken immigration system.

Let me start, however, by saying that rules-based immigration is important for our community and our country. You only need to look at West Cumbria’s health and care system where nurses and care workers from Nigeria and many other countries are keeping our NHS running. I put on record my thanks to them for coming here, looking after local people and making West Cumbria their home. You are welcome.

Let’s not forget too the international expertise we need for our world-leading nuclear work. I recently met an American playing a vital role in our nuclear supply chain who has made his home in Frizington and is very happy to call our area home! We need these people too.

It is not those coming here legally, playing by the rules and filling vital roles that local people tell me they have a problem with. It’s those entering the UK illegally, mostly in small boats, who are ‘skipping the queue’. 

Our immigration system must be rules based, fair and balanced. While we have so many people arriving illegally, the fairness and balance isn’t there and the system fails. Until July this year, we had a government that spent hundreds of millions of pounds on unworkable gimmicks while failing to take action against the people smugglers. People are right to be angry with the consequences.

We saw those consequences when the new government took over and revealed a £6 billion in-year overspend on asylum costs, and £8 million a day spent on hotels. They left a system in total chaos.

We’re now starting to get a grip and fix the mess the last lot left behind. It’s early days, but the results so far speak for themselves. We’re now making 10,000 asylum decisions per month instead of the 1,000 that were made under the Conservatives. Nearly 10,000 people with no right to be here have been removed in the first few months, a significant increase on the same period last year under the Conservatives.

The government is also taking tough action to reduce the numbers coming here illegally in the first place. Criminal smuggling gangs have been making millions out of small boat crossings, undermining our border security and putting lives at risk. Labour’s new Border Security Command is co-ordinating intelligence and enforcement agencies in the UK and working with partners overseas to disrupt the smuggling gangs’ supply chains, and dismantle their criminal networks. The government has signed new agreements with several countries and arrests are already being made to disrupt this vile trade.

There is a lot more work to do but we’ve got a government committed to doing the serious, grown up work that is required. Our approach will save taxpayers £7 billion over the next ten years and finally restore the fairness and balance to our immigration system that people expect.

Parliamentarians from across the country are enjoying beer brewed right here in West Cumbria this week thanks to Whitehaven and Workington MP Josh MacAlister.

The famous Strangers’ Bar in the Palace of Westminster – a favourite haunt of MPs and Government Ministers after late night votes – hosts guest beers sponsored by MPs who want to champion local breweries.

Josh secured one of the prized spots for Tractor Shed Brewing, based in Seaton. Their Kellins’ Blonde is on tap until next week.

Tractor Shed owners Graeme and Rachel and their son Matthew joined Josh in Parliament this week to pull pints for the punters. Graeme said:

“We were delighted to hear that Josh had managed to get our Kessin’ Blonde into Strangers Bar in the Palace of Westminster and enjoyed watching him pull a perfect pint.

“It was great to discuss the difficulties small independent breweries have getting their beers into pubs that are often tied to a global brewery. This and other issues are affecting the viability of small breweries and the customers we supply so it’s good to know that we can count on Josh’s support.”

Josh said:

“I love championing local businesses and do as at every opportunity, so it was a great pleasure to get Tractor Shed Brewing’s brilliant beer on tap in Parliament!

“I want to see the fantastic craft beers produced at local breweries like Tractor Shed Brewing and Ennerdale Brewery in more pubs across Cumbria and beyond and our independent brewers have my full support in making that happen.”

Everybody in West Cumbria deserves the right to live in a home that is well insulated and where their bills are affordable. These were key commitments in Labour’s manifesto before the election. This week we started to deliver on those promises.

Under plans announced this week by the Labour Government, up to 300,000 households across the UK will benefit from home upgrades in the next year, with new funding to help households of every kind in West Cumbria take up measures that can help save money on their bills and deliver cleaner heating.

This includes boosting the budget for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to support more households to switch to a heat pump – which can save families around £100 a year compared to a gas boiler by using a smart tariff effectively. Homeowners can get a £7,500 heat pump grant through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which had the highest number of applications ever in October according to Ofgem. And we’re removing the need to submit a planning application to install a heat pump and removing the 1m rule to make it easier to switch.

We’re also going to insulate more homes across the country – potentially saving homeowners around £200 per year. Social housing residents, lower income householders and renters will receive funded energy efficiency upgrades – including insulation and low-carbon heating. I’ll be doing everything I can to get this support for as many households in West Cumbria as possible and I’ve met with the Energy Minister twice already to make our case.

One of the things we need is the workforce who can deliver the programme, which is why I was so pleased last week to open the new Green Energy and Skills Centre at Lakes College. Through this new centre we can train up the workers we need to deliver a major retrofit programme. Congratulations to everyone who has been involved in pulling this new centre together. This will help to secure new jobs as part of these plans to reduce energy bills. 

Working alongside Labour’s mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower, the Warm Homes Plan will ensure millions more households benefit from homegrown energy delivered by every new turbine, solar panel, nuclear power plant or pylon built on the path to energy independence.

This follows our plan to lift over one million households out of fuel poverty by consulting on boosting minimum energy efficiency standards for all renters by 2030, delivering warmer homes and cheaper bills.

And in the short term, we’re providing over £400 million of support for families and pensioners this winter through the Household Support Fund and we’ve worked with energy companies to announce half a billion pounds of help with energy bills for those in the most need.

Our plans, alongside the immediate support for families this winter, will put an end to the short-term approach that failed our community under the Conservatives.

Latest figures reveal there were 482 children in care in Cumberland in the final year of Conservative Government as Labour announces the biggest reform to children’s social care in a generation.

The reforms deliver many of the recommendations made by Whitehaven and Workington MP Josh MacAlister in his Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in 2022.

Josh, who was commended by the Secretary of State for his work in this area during her announcement of the reforms, said:

“Looked after children in West Cumbria deserve loving homes, their families should get timely, intensive help and taxpayers must be given value for money. That’s what these reforms are all about and they implement many of the recommendations I made in my review which were overlooked by the previous government.

“Labour is fixing the foundations of a broken children’s social care system after years of neglect and ballooning costs under the Conservatives. Today, we are spending far too much money on crisis-level intervention, and some of the most vulnerable children are being failed. That has to change and the work of change has begun.”

Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, praised Josh’s work during her statement announcing the reforms in the House of Commons:

“I pay tribute to my honourable friend for his tremendous work in this area. I am delighted that we have been able to act in many of the areas that he identified as part of his review. 

“He is right to draw our attention to the thousands of people, including those with lived experience, who contributed to his vital work. It is testament to his work and their contributions that the Government are able to take forward work in so many areas that will make a significant difference to the lives and experiences of vulnerable children across our country, from today and over many years to come.”

Across the country, the number of children in care has risen 5% over the last 5 years to 83,632 across England in the year to March 2024. According to analysis by the Local Government Association, there are now over 1,500 children in residential care each costing the equivalent of over £500,000 every year, while the largest 15 private providers make an average of 23% profit. 

New rules will require companies providing foster and residential care to share their finances with the government, allowing profiteering to be challenged. Increasing financial transparency will ensure the providers that have the biggest impact on the market don’t unexpectedly go under and leave children without a home.

There will also be a “backstop” law to put a limit on the profit providers can make, that the government will introduce if providers do not voluntarily put an end to profiteering.

More widely, the government is beginning the process of rebalancing the whole children’s social care system in favour of early intervention, giving every family the legal right to be involved in decisions made about children entering the care system. There will also be new laws to make a range of public bodies, like universities and hospitals, behave as corporate parents for children in care and care leavers. 

One of the most damaging consequences of the last 14 years has been the underinvestment by previous governments in our roads and public transport network. The consequences of that have hit hard in rural areas like ours. Bus services slashed, a train line that is crumbling and, despite the best efforts of the council, too many potholes on our roads.

Fixing the roads, delivering better buses for West Cumbria, securing investment to upgrade the Cumbrian Coast Line and tackling some of the issues currently causing delays and cancellations on our railway are key priorities of mine and I seek every chance I can to lobby ministers and officials.

We’ve seen some really positive announcements in recent weeks from the new government which mean we can start to address these longstanding issues. 

On roads, an extra £500 million was allocated to councils for local road repairs in the Budget, which means we can fill more potholes and resurface more broken roads. And I met last week with National Highways to lobby for a multi-million pound project to improve safety on the A595 to be funded next year, which I’ll do my best to deliver. 

We had a major announcement at the start of this week of £1 billion extra for bus services next year – including £5 million for Cumberland – which will protect existing routes and deliver new ones. This is a huge boost to back our buses and means we can be even more ambitious in our plans to connect more communities to the bus network in our area. Cumberland Council are doing great work on this already, with recent improvements and new services delivered. Phase two is being consulted on as we speak. This money means there can be a phase three to those plans and I’ll be working closely with Cllr Denise Rollo and the Labour leadership of the council to get maximum benefit for West Cumbria.

On rail, I’m pulling all the relevant local stakeholders together to update the business case for a major upgrade of the Cumbrian Coast Line so that we’re in the best possible position next year when funding decisions start being made. I stood up in the chamber last week to ask the Secretary of State to intervene to resolve the long-running Northern conductor dispute which the Tories did nothing to address. And I’ve met with Northern and Network Rail in Parliament in the past week to discuss improvements to the track and timetable.

Every week I go down to Westminster with you in mind and I fight for the things you tell me are important to you. We won’t win every fight, but I hope you know I will always do my best to deliver for West Cumbria.

Josh MacAlister MP and Cumberland’s Labour council have today backed the Labour Government’s transformative plans to deliver better buses across Cumberland by providing £5 million in funding next year.

The investment has been designated to enhance popular routes, protect and create new rural services and increase bus use for shopping, socialising and commuting. It will help prevent service reductions on at-risk routes and improve punctuality, to bring an end to the current postcode lottery of unreliable services.

Totalling £955 million across England, the funding represents a record level of recent investment for bus improvements for the majority of areas, alongside once in a generation reform to deliver London-style bus services to every corner of the country.

Under the Conservatives, bus services in England outside London collapsed, with thousands of bus services cut, and almost 300 million fewer miles driven by buses per year, since 2010. Across Cumbria alone, bus miles declined by 20%.

As part of this investment, the way funding is allocated has been reformed. The reforms will allocate funding based on need and will end the Conservative’s wasteful system of competitive bidding for funding, which wastes resources and delays decisions. 

This funding announcement comes alongside the Government’s plans to deliver the biggest overhaul to the country’s bus services in a generation, and call time on four decades of failed deregulation.

The Labour Government is expanding the power to take back control of local bus services to every community, and is speeding up the process of delivering public control of buses by removing barriers to bus franchising and public ownership.

The funding announcement is the latest stop on the Government’s journey to better buses, with a new Buses Bill to be introduced to Parliament in the coming months. 

Cllr Denise Rollo, Cabinet Member for Sustainable, Resilient and Connected Places on Cumberland Council, said:

“I am delighted that the Transport Secretary has confirmed over £5 million of new bus funding across our council area.

“People across Cumberland are tired of unreliable, infrequent bus services holding them back from opportunities after a decade of neglect of our local bus services.

“This new Government has a plan to deliver better buses across the country, and this funding boost is another crucial stop on that journey.”

Whitehaven and Workington MP Josh MacAlister said:

“Buses are the lifeblood of communities, but the system is broken. Too often, passengers in West Cumbria are left waiting hours for buses that don’t turn up – and some rural areas have been cut off altogether.

“That’s why the new Government is reforming funding to deliver better buses across the country and end the postcode lottery of bus services. We’re set to feel the benefit of that here in West Cumbria and I’m excited about the changes we can now make with this extra resource.

“By delivering better buses, we’ll ensure people have proper access to jobs and opportunities and can access health services and leisure facilities. I look forward to working with Denise and the council to ensure our area feels the maximum benefit.”

New analysis from Josh MacAlister reveals that an estimated 3,196 workers on the National Minimum Wage in West Cumbria are set to receive up to an additional £1,400 a year after Labour’s first budget saw the National Living Wage rise to £12.21 an hour.

The boost is a significant step towards making sure the minimum wage is a genuine living wage, and comes as part of Labour’s wider mission to grow the economy and making working people better off.

In addition to the rise in the minimum wage, Labour has:

· Ensured working people won’t face higher taxes in their payslip, with no increase in National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.

· Announced £240m in additional funding to get Britain working. This will include trailblazers in mayoral combined authorities to join up work, skills and health support and implement the Youth Guarantee.

· Extended the Household Support Fund for a full year, on top of the six months already announced, with an additional £750m to help struggling families and pensioners in England.

· Announced a clear plan to fix the foundations of our economy by restoring stability, increasing investment and reforming the economy to drive up prosperity and living standards across the UK.

Publishing the analysis, Josh said,

“After 14 years of stagnation and decline under the Tories – and the worst parliament for living standards in British history – Labour is determined to make working people better off. This huge boost to the National Minimum Wage will make full time minimum wage workers in West Cumbria £1,400 better off a year. That’s a huge step towards our goal of making the minimum wage a real living wage – a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work.

“But Labour won’t stop there. The new Labour Government is fixing the foundations of our economy, investing in the infrastructure we need to deliver long-term growth and providing struggling households here in West Cumbria with an extended Household Support Fund, because we recognise that the cost of living crisis is far from over.

“Labour is turning the page on the last 14 years of failure under the Conservatives – fixing the NHS, rebuilding our economy and protecting working people.”

The number one priority of any government is to keep its citizens safe. That also means looking after those in our armed forces who put their lives on the line to maintain that safety and honouring those who make the ultimate sacrifice in service to our great country. 

Over the weekend it was a great honour and privilege to represent Parliament and the Government for the first time as your MP at Remembrance Sunday commemorations in Whitehaven and Workington. 

For me it was the culmination of a week of events to recognise and remember west Cumbrians and those across Britain who fought and died for our country – and those veterans still living who need our support.

I planted a poppy cross in the Garden of Remembrance outside Parliament to recognise our Whitehaven and Workington heroes, noting in particular all those miners from our area who went from the pits to the frontline in service of the nation. 

I also took part in the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Ride in Parliament, although sadly I didn’t come top of the leaderboard! 

And I joined volunteers from the Legion and local cadets to collect donations in Morrisons. RBL branches locally do such a fantastic job of supporting our veterans and I’d like to put on record my thanks to them for their work all year round, but especially their outstanding efforts for the Poppy Appeal this year. 

But we can’t leave it all to charities, the government has an important role to play in supporting our troops and veterans. And the Government took several positive steps this week to right the wrongs of recent years. 

First, the Bill to create the UK’s first Armed Forces Commissioner was tabled in Parliament. The Commissioner will be the first independent advocate dedicated to supportive serving personnel and their families and I’ll proudly support its passage through Parliament. 

Second, the Government announced new support for our veterans. It is a travesty that under the Tories people who fought for our country were sleeping on the streets. We’re determined to right that wrong and we’ve put an extra £3.5 million into the Reducing Veteran Homelessness programme, which provides wraparound specialist support for employment and independent living for veterans experiencing or at risk of homelessness. This programme was set to end next year under the Tories, we are extending it to 2026. 

This is in addition to our commitment to exempt veterans from rules which require a connection to a local area to access social housing in England, as part of the Government’s “homes for heroes” pledge. 

This is a Government committed to delivering for all those who serve and have served. As your MP I will ensure our veterans get the support they need and deserve, not just at Remembrance but year-round.