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I represent one of the poorest areas in the country. Unlike my leadership rivals, I do not make a flying visit to my constituency every weekend. I live there, seven days a week. And Hackney has been the lucky recipient of every form of state intervention in the inner-city since the days of [former Tory minister] Michael Heseltine. But I know that government has been a great deal more successful in regenerating buildings in areas such as Hackney than in regenerating people. I have never been successful in counting up the billions of pounds which have been poured into Hackney under governments of both political parties. But I have often remarked that, if you had stood on the corner for a few days and handed out bags of money to everyone who passed by, you might have had more immediate impact on the lives of ordinary people. I do not want to sound ungrateful. The combination of a beneficent Labour mayor and a beneficent Labour Government has meant huge infrastructure improvements in Hackney in the past decade. We have a new underground line, vastly improved bus services and sparkling new stations. Millions of pounds have been spent on our hospitals and buildings for GP surgeries, primary schools and colleges. There are five new secondary schools, and more money has been spent on renovating our estates. My government also presided over a housing bubble, which was very lucrative for many. When the West Indian community moved to Hackney in the 1960s, people could not give away property in the area. Many a house-proud black pensioner whose door I knocked on in the last election, acquired their home in the 1960s at rock-bottom prices. Many more were able to sell houses, originally acquired for tens of thousands, for hundreds of thousands at the height of the housing bubble, and head off to the Caribbean to live lives of ease and luxury on their public sector pensions. The state has been able to improve infrastructure, preside over a stratospheric rise in property prices and has brought down unemployment in inner-city areas across the country. Fixing family structures and community relationships has proved more challenging. We know something has happened to family structures and the cohesiveness of the family, when family members routinely crowd in front of the television cameras to blame social workers when a child dies at the hand of another family member. They never hesitate to blame social services or to air their suspicions that something was going wrong. But sometimes, I wonder, ‘What did they do?' Don't they take any responsibility for the grandchild or niece? Have we completed sub-contracted responsibility for family members to under-paid and over worked employees of the state? I take a particularly strong view on issues of self-help and community solidarity because I come from an immigrant family. Social solidarity within the immigrant community is often regarded as problematic. But I think that it is something worth respecting. I reject the idea of ‘Broken Britain'. I know of too many hardworking volunteers and unsung neighbourliness for that. If [prime minister] David Cameron's Big Society is just a way of marketing big cuts in the welfare state it will be firmly rejected, not just by me but, by the British people. It will become deader than Tony Blair's unlamented ‘Third way'. And I believe in strong, properly-funded state institutions with paid professional staff. I do not share the agenda of the Tory right for a smaller state. And I believe that a proper social wage, a drive for full employment, investment in housing are all pre-conditions for beginning to address the issues of family and community that I have touched on. Money alone cannot cure all the ills of our inner-city communities. If socialism means anything at all, it means that I am my brother's keeper. But these key issues of family and community have been largely ignored in this leadership campaign. But, in the long run, these are the things that really matter to people. Diane Abbott is the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. A former Westminster councillor and Home Office civil servant, she was a press officer for the GLC under Ken Livingstone and head of press at Lambeth LBC. She is also a broadcaster and commentator

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WHITEHALL

What we want from our public services

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