There was some positive movement in key policy areas in another busy week in Westminster.
Firstly, the government is making big changes to the youth justice system to help children stay out of trouble. Most adult criminals first started breaking the law when they were kids, often because they had difficult lives.
To fix this, the government is spending £46 million on a “turnaround” program to help kids find a better path, creating a new law to punish adults who trick or force children into crime, and setting up special “problem-solving” courts to focus on helping young people change their behaviour.
The UK economy is currently the fastest growing in the G7. To keep this progress in place, the government has a plan to help small businesses. We will cut red tape and making it easier to get loans. We will pass a law to stop late payments, which currently costs the economy £11 billion every year, and we will work more closely with Europe to make it cheaper for businesses to trade and travel.
The HS2 railway project also has a new leadership team that is getting the work done faster. They have already finished six major building tasks earlier than expected – a really positive outcome.
Because of the war in Iran, fuel and energy prices have gone up, putting pressure on families and businesses. In response, the government is moving away from expensive oil and gas and toward clean energy like wind, sun, and nuclear power, and giving truck drivers a one-year road tax holiday, saving them up to £600 per lorry.
We are also cutting taxes on “red diesel” for farmers and freight trains and stopping taxes on over 100 different foods in supermarkets to help lower the price of the weekly shop.
The world is becoming more dangerous due to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The first duty of any government is the protection of its people, so the UK has decided to increase military spending to 2.5% of the country’s total wealth (GDP), and passed a law that lets the government take over British Steel, necessary to protect the industry and national security.
We are also looking after pay and conditions for our troops, by giving soldiers their biggest pay rise in 20 years and improving military housing.
The government is acting abroad by banning oil from Russia to stop funding their war, demanding explanations for how people are being treated in the Middle East conflict, and working with other countries to make sure ships can travel safely through the Strait of Hormuz.
Back in the constituency last week, I attended a meeting with representatives of the residents of Heath Farm Lane in Partington and Vistry, the developer. I have been working with residents for the past few months pressing Vistry to hold the maintenance company FirstPort to account and ensure that routine maintenance is undertaken and outstanding work to complete everything promised to buyers is completed.
This was a positive meeting – Vistry acknowledged the problems and have undertaken to complete urgent maintenance works themselves given FirstPort’s failure to do so. They also confirmed that they are taking legal advice on their options. They walked the site with residents to log all work requests and confirmed in the meeting that the offensive graffiti on the children’s playground will be urgently dealt with.
Hopefully we will see some progress from the back of this meeting, and a further meeting is being scheduled to check on this.
Despite Parliament being in the Whitsun recess, I was then back in Westminster for a few days, with some business around my ministerial duties, before heading back out to the constituency on Thursday morning. I visited the Little Green Sock Project in Trafford Park. This fantastic local charity collects and redistributes quality essential items for local children – such important work. I met the team and discussed some issues they are having with funding – I look forward to following this up.
Friday started with a few meetings in Trafford Town Hall. The second of these was a briefing on the Wharfside Masterplan – an extremely important project centred around the redevelopment of Old Trafford football ground. It was a positive briefing and I look forward to seeing more detail over the coming months – this could be genuinely transformative for the economic and cultural outlook for the area.
I then went on to two constituency advice surgeries, the first in Partington and the second in Urmston, where I heard from residents on a range of issues. Although these days, there is very little that my team and I cannot address over email or the phone, it is still useful to be able to meet residents face-to-face, which is why I hold 4 of these advice surgeries every month.
I finished Friday off with a visit to see residents at a sheltered accommodation housing development in Urmston, where they are having some issues around service charges on the properties. I will contact the housing provider on their requests to see if we can get some of their issues solved for them.
I took some time on Saturday to catch up with family and friends, before travelling back to London on Sunday for an early start to work on Monday morning, with meetings in the Department, and preparation for an Adjournment Debate on Tuesday all planned.