Torbay MP relishes new front bench role

'I am keen to be able to hold the government to account'

Torbay MP Steve Darling believes his new front-bench role in the House of Commons will help him champion the needs of vulnerable local people.

The recently elected Liberal Democrat MP is now the party’s spokesperson on work and pensions.

He said it will help him highlight issues such as the loss of the winter fuel allowance for pensioners nationwide, but particularly in places like Torbay where the number of people affected is higher than most.

“This is a position that I think suits me extremely well,” he said. “We have a higher-than-average number of pensioners in our patch, and that puts us ahead of the game considering where the rest of the country will be in a dozen or so years’ time.”

He said the loss of the winter fuel allowance for all but the poorest pensioners particularly hits those in their eighties, and added: “I am keen to be able to hold the government to account around that.”

He said he also wanted to challenge the government over the cumbersome benefits system, saying it should use the example of the way the Conservatives quickly streamlined the procedures around passport applications to make the benefits system faster and easier.

“I am looking forward to challenging the minister around that, too,” he said.

“I also want to see how the government can be helping people get back into work. We have high levels of worklessness in Torbay, so it’s an issue in which I will take a keen interest.

“It’s about getting people into the right places, and getting them into work, doing it in a positive way rather than pointing the finger at them for being out of work, as we have seen from some quarters in the past.”

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has urged his party to be a ‘responsible opposition’, and Mr Darling said: “We can be a positive opposition, rather than indulging in the Punch and Judy politics we have seen in the past, holding the government to account, but doing it in a positive and constructive way.”