Parliament prorogued on Thursday ahead of the Kings Speech on November 7th. My first prorogation, this is the mechanism by which the parliamentary session is brought to an end before the Kings Speech sets out the legislative priorities for the year ahead. Nonetheless it was a busy week in Westminster both in and out of the Chamber.

On Monday the Prime Minister provided the House with an update on Israel and Palestine. I am very concerned about the ongoing situation and in particular the need to ensure international law is upheld, rather than just repeatedly assert that it must be. I therefore challenged the Prime Minister on the steps he is taking to be confident international law is not being broken, about the role of independent observers to monitor what is happening on the ground, and how we can prevent collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

The conflict has now been ongoing for more than three weeks. Things continue to change at pace and I have avoided providing a running commentary both because updates are very quickly out of date and because there is a considerable amount of misinformation circulating on all sides. What is clear is that the humanitarian position remains dire. I will continue to press the Government on this and call for aid to be urgently available to Palestinian civilians.

Later on Monday the long awaited Renters Reform Bill finally had its second reading. Second reading is the debate on the general principle of a Bill and a discussion of what needs to change as it makes its way through Parliament. I raised a number of concerns, in particular about what the changed rules around anti-social behaviour will mean for victims of domestic violence. Other problems I highlighted were around punitive guidance on the enforcement of rent arrears, and the Government’s decision to delay the abolition of Section 21 no-fault evictions until after they have fixed the court system. This is a dreadful concession to some of the landlords on the Tory backbenches, and is ridiculous given it is this Tory Government that broke the court system in the first place.

On Wednesday the Economic Activity of Public Bodies Bill returned to the Commons for its report stage. This is an ill-thought out and incredibly poorly written Bill which the Tories are pushing for purely political purposes. It seeks to restrict the ability of public bodies – including local authorities – to make decisions about procurement based on political views. I am disappointed to see the Government use this Bill to attempt to curtail the ability of local authorities – who have a democratic mandate of their own – to make decisions they believe to be morally right.

I made a brief intervention in the debate to talk about decisions taken by the Labour Group in Trafford when I was Leader; and in support of a Labour amendment that would enable such decisions to still be taken on human rights grounds. We will continue to try to amend the Bill as its goes through the parliamentary process but as it stands in its unamended form I would find it very difficult to vote for the Bill at the final approval stage.

Outside of the Chamber the highlight of the week for me was attending the Priced Out manifesto launch. Priced Out is the campaign for affordable housing and I am proud to be one of their parliamentary champions. You will know from previous blogs that housing is a key area of interest for me and Priced Out are doing some excellent work promoting the need to build homes to tackle generational inequality.

Back in the constituency I was pleased to be able to meet with Meghan from the charity Human Appeal to help launch their winter coat collection campaign in the constituency. Human Appeal do an annual call for donations of warm clothing to support low-income families, the homeless and others in need. I’m really pleased that Safe Store on Brindley Road in Old Trafford are hosting a collection point and would encourage anyone with warm clothes to donate to pop in as soon as possible.

Finally, it was great to join our excellent by-election candidate Frances Cosby in Bucklow St Martins Ward for campaigning on Saturday with the Labour team. The by-election is taking place on Thursday 2nd November and I have my fingers crossed for a positive result when the count takes place on Friday morning!