THURROCK MP Dame Jackie Doyle-Price made a lengthy speech in the House of Commons in the past week, covering a wide range of issues including immigration, public finance and housebuilding.

Speaking in the debate following Wednesday's Budget, Dame Jackie - who shared her differing opinions with political rival Jen Craft on Thurrock Nub News earlier in the week - also reflected on the financial catastrophe that has blighted Thurrock and some of the seasons behind it.

She said: "Perhaps I could give some clarity on why Thurrock Council got in such bad financial trouble.

"Over the last decade, as some members will know, Thurrock was the subject of very aggressive three-way politics, with the UK Independence party holding the balance of power between a Labour minority administration and a Conservative minority administration.

"Frankly, it was impossible to get a balanced budget passed, because sensible decisions would not be taken to either increase council tax or reduce spending.

"That led council officers to pursue a risky borrowing strategy in order to plug the gap.

Dame Jackie Doyle-Price

"The lesson we should learn is not so much about the Government's overall strategy on local government, but about the need for all of us, wherever we are in public life, to take sensible decisions based on positive outcomes for those we serve."

Among other subjects she spoke about the need to do more for children with special educational needs, telling the House: "It is an issue that we really need to get to grips with.

"We are witnessing some very real challenges for children with statements in our schools, for a whole host of reasons.

"One of them is that, for a while, there was a fashionable view in the educational establishment that children with special needs ought to be educated in a mainstream setting.

"That will work for many of them, but we will fail others, including others in the school, if we continue with this model. Overall, it has led to under-investment in special provision, which has resulted in so many schools having to manage more and more children with special needs. I have seen that at first hand in my constituency.

"We have reports of a massive post-pandemic increase in children with statements, not all of which are related to having been out of school; some of these things are genetic. There has been a massive increase in children presenting as non-verbal, and we have not really got to grips with why that is.

"We need to acknowledge that the explosion in special needs is being absorbed by our school sector. Let us pay tribute to those working in the sector, who are doing their best. I have seen at first hand the real efforts being made in some of my schools to manage this issue, and to give the best possible education to all pupils.

"I recently visited Tudor Court Primary School in my constituency, where I was told that 13% of the school's intake now have a statement. I was also told that the figure is low compared with that for other schools, which strikes me as a significant indication that this issue ought to become a top priority.

"I come back to the fact that we must, first and foremost, look after those who need our help the most, not those who shout loudest. I often say that this place (the House of Commons) works best for the pointy-elbowed middle classes. We really need to make sure that we focus on those who need our help the most."

On finance and the management of local councils Dame Jackie also had some strongly worded comments to make, saying: "We need to look again at how to ensure that local authorities make mature and sensible decisions about their budgeting.

Dame Jackie Doyle-Price addressed the House of Commons

"The Audit Commission has been replaced by audit firms, and the frank advice that ought to be given has simply not been given. We used to have the surcharge, which was a very blunt instrument, to ensure that councillors made mature and sensible financial decisions, but now councillors have no stake.

"We often say in this place that we have great champions for local communities, but we have to show leadership and maturity in making sensible decisions."

She particularly picked on the failure of some local councillors to see the bigger picture, saying: "When it comes to local councils, we have the same situation on speed. They have great local ward champions who view themselves as street-by-street spokespeople for every problem, but they perhaps do not properly recognise their corporate responsibility for making sensible judgments.

"Councils are multimillion-pound businesses that are there to deliver outcomes for the whole local authority area, not just individual wards.

"As well as looking holistically, we need to make sure that, where local authorities get things wrong, there is an element of accountability outside the ballot box, especially because local election turnouts are so poor. That is all our fault.

"We are all politicians, and it is our job to motivate people to vote for us. I am often frustrated by the knockabout of political debate, which is a big turn off - it is sometimes a big turn off to sit here on a Wednesday lunch time. For people who are not engaged with politics, it is an even bigger turn off. The result is that, particularly in local politics, people zone out and switch off.

"Even after the biggest failure in local government finance, the turnout in my local election in Thurrock was less than 20% in some wards.

Is that not shocking? It tells us that the public are thinking, 'Well, it doesn't make any difference. It doesn't matter who I vote for. Nothing will change."

"We should all think about that as the general election approaches, because I detect the same mood out there."

Dame Jackie also had strong views on the subject of housing, comments that drew her plaudits from Danny Kruger, a Conservative MP from Devises who described her as 'the authentic voice of Conservative common sense.'

Rounding off her speech the borough MP highligfhted the debacle of the redevelopment of Purfleet.

She said: "I come to my final issue. I have said for a long time that the biggest challenge facing this country is the lack of affordable housing and the failure to build enough new homes. I welcome the continued emphasis by the Government on this issue, but we are still failing to deliver.

"Yesterday, the Chancellor mentioned new investment to facilitate new housing in Barking and Canary Wharf. If we are to learn from what can go wrong, I encourage him to travel a few miles east to my constituency, to Purfleet.

"It sits on the River Thames and it has a railway station that can take people to Fenchurch Street in the City of London in 45 minutes. We have been talking about building 3,500 homes in Purfleet since 2008. If they were constructed on the River Thames, 45 minutes from central London, these homes would have sold themselves.

"Purfleet Centre Regeneration Limited, a public-private partnership, was developed to deliver these homes. It had £70 million-worth of public land gifted to it.

Dame Jackie Doyle-Price was praised by fellow Conservative Danny Kruger (right in the picture).

"It was granted £5 million in 2015 to kickstart the works, and it subsequently received £70 million in housing infrastructure funding. The first house was promised to be constructed by 2018. We are now in 2024, and we do not have a single new home after all that public money.

"I want the Government to register that while it is great to see capital funding being made available, with all these wonderful brochures with nice plans for new homes, nothing is being delivered.

"I wonder whether there is something wrong with how we approach these things. From where I am sitting, I can see consultants who have managed to earn a pretty penny over the past eight years out of Purfleet, but we have achieved nothing except the disappointment of the public.

"The public have supported and got behind these proposals, but have found their hopes and ambitions dashed.

"They deserve better.

"They have been seriously misled by a number of people. It is not for me to apologise to the people of Purfleet - I have done my best to call out the fact that the emperor had no clothes for a very long time - but the public gets very disillusioned when promises given by politicians come to nothing.

"If we really are to deliver more new homes, then we need to look at why we have not realised the ambitions from such projects in the past."