In Brighton, at the Labour Party Conference, Ed Miliband made a simple point: Britain can do better.

If elected in 2015, Labour will boost our under-performing country, but also improve our local area and fight the cost of living crisis facing so many people in Tower Hamlets.

Labour is offering real answers. In his speech, Ed Miliband made a number of important pledges.

He made clear that a Labour government would freeze gas and electric bills for two years, dramatically extend free childcare to help struggling families and embark on a massive house building programme delivering 200,000 homes a year to tackle overcrowding and rising house prices.

The “bedroom tax” would also be repealed, as it is unfairly hitting over 400,000 disabled people hard.

These policies would be especially helpful to local people here in east London.

That is because, if one thing was clear from Ed’s speech, we are facing a cost of living crisis. In Tower Hamlets, people are on the front line of this crisis. So many young people are unemployed, some 42 per cent of children live in poverty, we have a chronic shortage of housing and families and older people often struggle to make ends meet because of high gas and electricity bills and the rising cost of living. The economic failures of this government have been laid bare and we’ve seen their true colours. Whatever their message, the economy is still in a very bad way. David Cameron is out of touch with ordinary people’s lives.

He would rather give tax breaks to millionaires and support the bosses of energy companies line their pockets with massive profits than help people struggling to cope in the face of high energy bills and the high cost of living.

Labour is offering answers, everything from helping families struggling with high energy prices to aiding young people struggling without jobs.

The cost of living crisis is real and acutely felt in London. There are few places where that is more apparent than Tower Hamlets and few places in our city that need a Labour government more.