Happy New Year and thank you for reading my first blog of 2024!

Parliament returned on Monday after the Christmas recess to a year we know will see a dissolution of Parliament and a General Election.

The news cycle has been dominated by the Post Office Horizon scandal and Parliament followed suit with a couple of urgent statements/questions granted by the Speaker on Monday and Wednesday.  It’s absolutely right that Parliament intervenes to accelerate the process of providing justice to affected postmasters and I look forward to the Government putting in place the legislation needed to bring that about.

We were soon back in the swing of things and I spoke in two debates as well as asking a question last week. My first speech was in Labour’s Opposition Day debate on the crisis in NHS dentistry. I couldn’t not speak in this given the horror stories I hear first-hand from local people about their troubles accessing dental care. It’s almost impossible to find a dentist who is taking on NHS patients and I have constituents living in near constant pain as a result. I highlighted the shocking wait times locally for oral surgery and the shortage of dentists, before endorsing Labour’s plan for investment in NHS dentistry that will deliver 700,000 more appointments per year.

The other debate I spoke in was on the cost of the Government’s Rwanda Scheme. Those who follow my parliamentary work will know that I have repeatedly made clear my concerns about this ill-thought out and inhumane proposal. This debate was specifically about the Government’s refusal to publish the full costs of the scheme. As I said in my contribution this is an affront to transparency and accountability, but we do know the cost is at least in the hundreds of millions. That cash could be spent much better actually processing asylum claims and dealing with the huge backlog rather than a scheme that looks destined to fail and has been repeatedly ruled illegal.

One key local issue that has emerged in recent months has been the loss of Post Office services in Partington. I have been contacted by numerous constituents about this and on Thursday I asked a Business Question on the possibility of having a debate about this. It’s appalling that Partington – with such bad public transport links – could be left without a Post Office having already lost its bank and I have now also made a formal application for an Adjournment Debate to discuss this further.

As ever around my contributions in the Chamber I had a number of meetings with various stakeholders. In particular I would want to highlight a really useful meeting I had with Age UK about Pension Credit. We talked about the different qualifying criteria for Pension Credit and ways in which we could work together to drive uptake across Stretford and Urmston. I will be following up with the Council to look at how we can link up on this moving forward.

Back in the constituency I had a busy Friday consisting of advice surgeries and visits. Of particular importance was my visit to St Anthony’s School to discuss support for students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. St Anthony’s has a significantly larger than average number of children with additional needs and it was useful to hear from them directly about the challenges of an underfunded system and the support they do offer to our young people.

As I mentioned above Parliament will dissolve at some point this year to enable a General Election. On Saturday I headed to our neighbouring constituency Altrincham and Sale West to support our excellent candidate Ben Hartley. Altrincham is a key target seat for the General Election but whether it’s in Stretford and Urmston or further afield whenever I speak to voters, I hear time and again of their desire to see change at the earliest opportunity. Their position is the same as mine: that election can’t come soon enough!