Making best of cards we have been dealt

It is the day after the spending review, and I know how anxious people are feeling as they digest what has been announced.

Barrow and Furness Labour MP John Woodcock

I am looking forward to being back up in Furness tomorrow and hearing from you about your thoughts on the cutbacks that will now have to be made in the area and across the country.

I would also welcome your feedback via this blog, which I am grateful to the Evening Mail for giving me the chance to use.

I will look to seize every opportunity that comes our way, such as the potential for super-fast broadband that could give local businesses a boost and so create more jobs.

But no-one should pretend that what has been signalled is good news for people here trying to get by and make ends meet.

People are already finding things tough, and it is hard to envisage just how bad things like a cut of around 25 per cent in local services is going to be.

Or the big cuts to the transport budget - my area of responsibility on the opposition front bench. Unfortunately, bus and rail passengers face the prospect of being squeezed and drivers face the prospect that much-needed road improvements will be abandoned.

Added to that, of course, is the Conservatives' proposal that the successor submarines in Barrow shipyard will be delayed and a firm decision to go ahead won't be taken for another six years. That creates needless uncertainty for workers in the yard and will make it harder to hold the skills base together What worries me most about the combination of announcements this week is the effect they are going to have on an area like Furness.

Experts are predicting that 500,000 jobs are going to go in the public sector alone - and possibly the same number in the private sector too.

Because we are more cut off from the big centres of population whose economies tend to grow faster, we are at greater risk from the storm ahead. It is not fair and not in the long term interests of our public finances to let us face this storm alone.

That's why it makes me so angry that the Conservatives - with the help of the Liberal Democrats - are trying to fool people into thinking there is no alternatives to this massive gamble with people's livelihoods and our economic future.

There is. If we made cuts more carefully and over a longer period we could ensure more growth in our economy by preserving more of what is really essential to our future. And more growth would leave us better off with more people in work paying taxes rather than being stuck on benefit costing taxpayers.

I am sorry that ministers are taking a different approach and worried about what it will mean for us. I will keep playing my part arguing for a more sensible, less reckless strategy.

But most importantly I will knuckle down with you over the coming weeks and months to make the best of the cards we have been dealt.