Letter from Parliament - Simon Danczuk MP

After seeing our students recently achieve some fantastic A level and GCSE results, it is only right to pay tribute to the young talent here in Rochdale. We can be very proud of our young people and these results are not only down to their hard work but also that of teachers, parents and the Council’s schools and children department led by Councilor Donna Martin.

The challenge we all face in Rochdale is to keep that talent in our Borough and stop a ‘brain drain’, which sees the brightest youngsters leave Rochdale to make their fortunes elsewhere.

For our Borough to prosper we have to do everything possible to encourage young innovators to stay here and contribute to our economy. I want to see more people like Richard Tang, the man who set up Zen Internet, one of the UK’s first Internet service providers in Rochdale, using their talents to help our town.

To do that we need more apprenticeships, employers developing better links with students and a clearer regeneration strategy by the local authority and Rochdale Development Agency to make our town a more attractive place. Only then can we start to move from ‘brain drain’ to ‘brain gain’.

If keeping the brightest talent in Rochdale should be one of our top priorities then so should keeping those that prey on the most vulnerable out of Rochdale. That’s why this week I went to meet the Bishop of Middleton to discuss the Archbishop of Canterbury’s plans to tackle payday lenders.

There are too many payday lenders charging staggering rates of interest to people in our town and I am worried about the huge levels of personal debt that are being wracked up. Last year I helped set Manchester Credit Union up in a shop on Yorkshire Street for a temporary period and I am hugely supportive of the plans being drawn up by the church to build up a network of credit unions.

It would be hard for me to write a column this week without mentioning Syria. Lots of people have contacted my office this week to make their views known ahead of the debate. There are some horrific crimes being committed in Syria and we all understand there is no easy solution to this terrible bloodshed. Pictures of children being gassed are sickening but politicians will need to draw back, pause for thought and not act in a way that makes a catastrophic situation even worse.