ON WEDNESDAY of last week I took part in the jobs and work section of the Queen’s Speech debate in Parliament. Having waited in the chamber for the best part of six-and-a-half hours in order to make my contribution, I sat with some disbelief listening to the discussion. 

One after another, speeches from the government benches painted a utopian picture of Britain somewhat at odds with what I see in my constituency. 

No wonder so many people outside the Westminster bubble — those out there in the real world — feel disenfranchised from politics.

Coalition members pursuing ideological destruction of public services and the welfare state were backslapping one another and lining up to praise their own measures. 

The fine and dandy politics shone through brightly, with politician after politician lecturing ordinary people that life in Britain is a joy and that everybody is doing marvellously well, a position ill at ease with reality.

People are right to be offended by politicians who continually ram down their throats the claim that their life is great and their families are fine and they should not complain and they should know their place.

We live in foodbank Britain, yet the rose-tinted politics of the coalition suggests that that is a good thing — it shows community spirit. It is conveniently forgotten that people have been forced into the arms of charities to feed themselves by blunt austerity measures. 

The fact that there are now more working people at foodbanks than there are people who are not working, is apparently the big society, and it is to be celebrated. Try telling that to the hundreds of thousands of people who were forced into the arms of foodbanks last year.

We live in insecure, low-paid employment Britain. 

The coalition simply says: “Well, we’ll look at zero-hours contracts, but listen — people should be happy that they’ve got zero-hours contracts. It’s a job. They’re not unemployed, and it doesn’t matter that they’re not making a halfpenny in a week. 

“It doesn’t matter that you haven’t got any protection in the workplace. Be happy because you’ve got a job and you’re not unemployed.” 

Try telling it to the young man or woman or the family who are on zero-hours contracts and cannot plan for the next week let alone the future. Try telling the agency workers who are being exploited. Try having a look at the situation they are in. Instead of telling everybody that life is brilliant, we should be looking at trying to restore some justice to ordinary people in this country.

I was dismayed by what happened on Wednesday. Members on the government benches lining up to suggest that we live in a modern-day utopia, congratulating their cruel government’s policies while at the same time there are people suffering greatly back in our constituencies. 

We have child poverty, pensioner poverty, fuel poverty and food poverty. People are relying on charitable handouts to put bread on the table and to clothe their children because the safety net which once supported those who had fallen on hard times, the poor and the vulnerable, has been brutally hacked away.

It is this we should have been addressing in the last Parliament before the general election. 

It is said that this is a zombie Parliament but it is not as if we have not got things to talk about and people to deliver for.

The Queen’s Speech contained nothing that will deliver for many of the people in our communities who are desperate and live in a world free of rose-tinting. They are desperate for some help from politicians from all sides. 

We were elected to represent the people in our communities and it is about time that people in Parliament understand that the Westminster bubble is completely different from other parts of the United Kingdom. 

We simply must, at all times, remember where we come from, where we want to be and who we represent.

Ian Lavery is Labour MP for Wansbeck.