The last update for a couple of weeks as Parliament is in recess for Easter and I'll be focusing on constituency visits and supporting our candidates for the forthcoming local elections.
The focus this week was very much on getting things finished ahead of a new session of Parliament later this year.
On Monday I met with the Roads Minister along with other colleagues to discuss the serious problems with the DVLA. The staff there really have no excuse for allowing the situation to get as bad as it has and I relayed the frustrations of people locally to the Minister and asked for affirmative action.
The ongoing situation in Ukraine was also high up the agenda and I was lucky enough to be able to meet with the Chief of Defence Staff for a confidential briefing to MPs. I was able to ask some of the pressing questions people have brought to me and got a clearer picture of what we have been doing to support the Ukrainians in their effort to repel Russian aggression.
On Tuesday as well as getting caught up on some constituency business, I joined colleagues for a round-table meeting with the new Leader of the House of Commons, Mark Spencer. This was a free ranging chat about a wide variety of issues and I found it very useful and encouraging. It was also helpful to me in my role as PPS to the Leader of the House of Lords in establishing a good working relationship between both Houses for the future.
On Wednesday the Science and Technology Select Committee questioned Sir Patrick Valance about a range of topics. I was able to ask him about what advice he had given to the Government about unlocking after Covid restrictions as well as following up on the work we did some weeks ago on diversity in STEM. I was pleased to hear that he recognises the challenge of getting more people from traditionally working-class areas into STEM careers and is looking at how to fix this.
I also met with the team from Cancer Research to discuss their asks for the next session of Parliament - one in two people will get cancer in their lifetime and we need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to support them.
To that end I was pleased to support the Health and Care Bill as it came back to the Commons this week. Subsequent Governments of all persuasions have kicked the can down the road on care in particular and so we have a moral duty to take some tough choice now to ensure there is still an NHS, free at the point of need for future generations.
Back in the Constituency I met with the leadership at JW Lees for a discussion about how hospitality is handling the reopening of the economy and to hear their thoughts and concerns - it was an extremely useful visit which armed me with important facts to support a key local employer.
Later on, following some individual visits, I visited the Manchester Science and Industry Museum for a meeting with the CEO. She wants to do more to get the museum involved in communities like Heywood and Middleton so that young people can be inspired into a career in the sciences or engineering - it was a really productive conversation which built on my own work in this area at Westminster and I'm hoping that we'll be able to offer some really exciting opportunities to young people locally in future.
As always, stay safe - have a great Easter and I'll see you in a couple of weeks.
