This has been one of the more dramatic weeks I can remember as a Member of Parliament. While I’d hoped the Prime Minister would avoid the chaos of the past few days, I welcome his decision finally to resign.
I made my position clear on 31st January in the Commons - after carefully consulting colleagues and friends in the Royal Town - that the Prime Minister no longer enjoyed my support. But when a leader loses the confidence of senior cabinet members, he or she has no choice but to do the honourable thing and resign.
By agreeing to stand down, the Prime Minister is doing what’s in the best the interests of the Conservative Party, our constituents and our country.
On Monday the Government will publish its timetable for the orderly transition of power. Our country is facing huge problems and there is no time to lose.
What we now need is a fresh start, and a new Prime Minster that represents a break from past mistakes and a unifying vision for the future.
As I said on the BBC last night:
“We need a leader who is unsullied by the mistakes and particularly the tone of the government as well as some of its actions. It needs to be someone with experience, preferably both domestic experience and of an international department of state because these are difficult times domestically and internationally.
And Finally, it does need to be someone who is patently moral and decent and can win back the vast numbers of Conservatives that we know have deserted the party from recent polling and by-elections.”
In meantime, life as an MP continues at full speed.
Constituency
Save our Cinema
The campaign to save the Royal Town’s cinema continues. Last week I met the Friends of the Cinema in Sutton Coldfield Group, a new initiative set up by members of the community opposed to the decision to close the Empire cinema. The group are committed to retaining a cinema facility at the current site and to find a future solution that would serve community interests while being commercially viable.
There was agreement that it was necessary to preserve the current building through investments befitting of grade-listed properties. In addition to securing the right funding to ensure its proper restoration, it was also agreed that retaining the building’s use as a significant film venue in some form should be an integral part of a future solution.
The Group shared many creative ideas to make the whole site work for everyone and will draw upon the extensive experience of professional members, including lawyers, architects, business-owners, film makers, planners and people with experience in creating community interest groups.
I am pleased to see this community endeavour going from strength to strength – with a membership running in to the hundreds and rising. Its popularity is testament to the support throughout the Royal Town for this valuable cause. Their next step will be to formerly constitute as a community group and start to create a strategy and structure. This will not be a quick or simple process, but they are united in their mission and firm in the belief that commercial considerations, while important, cannot override community considerations.
As well as meeting the cinema owner to discuss the way ahead, I have also held discussions with Birmingham City Council’s Senior Planner who, like me, wants to see a guarantee that the cinema will reopen and that sufficient money for this purpose, including Section 106 (planning gain) money will be duly allocated.
20th anniversary tribute for fallen Sutton Coldfield Detective Constable Rob Ling
At the end of last week I met up with two Sutton Coldfield residents, Glenn Billington and Pete Knight (both retired police officers) and serving Police Constable Dan Hitchmough. They told me of an event being arranged by PC Hitchmough which was in memory of a fallen police officer and all funds raised going to a children’s charity.
To mark the twentieth anniversary of Rob’s death the event will be held on Sunday 17th July 2022. The ‘The Rob Ling Memorial trophy’ will be contested by Leicestershire and Notts police at Ilkeston Football ground league. All proceeds are going to Young Live V Cancer and is in memory of eight year old Daniel Rigley (PC Dan Hitchmough’s cousin) who sadly lost his life to leukaemia.
The league and the final is sponsored by Glenn’s company, Jigsaw Infrared. They have donated a prize, a large glass heater which can be designed by the winner and worth over £1,000. The winner will be selected at random when they donate to the Just Giving page in this link https://www.justgiving.com/Combined-Midland-Police-League
If anyone wishes to attend the event, two football matches and family social day then please contact either glenn@solutionsbyjigsaw.co.uk or daniel.hitchmough@westmidlands.police.uk
Please donate to this amazing and well deserved charity, every penny counts
Passport Joy
A few weeks ago, I reported that Year 6 pupils in Mere Green Primary almost missed a school trip to France because some passports were not obtained in time. Fortunately, the passports arrived at the 11th hour – but not without an uphill battle.
Today I returned to Mere Green to meet those pupils and hear about their exciting trip. They took me through a wonderful journey in words, pictures and music of their experiences in France. I was presented with a thank you card made by the pupils and then chatted with many of the children and teachers.
I was pleased to do my bit to help, but the real credit must go to Caroline Dempsey, Mere Green school Office Manager who - as soon as she became aware that some passports may not be issued in time - made it her mission to help the children.
Caroline got in touch with me and of course I was only too happy to help, but it was Caroline who went above and beyond the call of duty. Just one day before the trip we managed to get the passport out of the Liverpool passport office which opened specially following an appeal from us both.
I continue to vigorously pursue the passports office in respect of a number of my constituents who are waiting anxiously for their passports.
Meeting of Sutton Heads
I had an informal lunch with the local secondary school head teachers who play a vital role in our town.
Held at the Arthur Terry School, the meeting was extremely informative and useful, with the discussion focused on a range of local educational issues. We are very lucky with the quality of our schools in Sutton, which reflect the ambition and quality of our head teachers.
I wanted to acknowledge the amazing service and dedication of one of Sutton’s Primary Head Teachers, Beverly Hanks, Head Teacher at New Hall Primary school in Falcon Lodge, who is retiring at the end of this current term.
Beverly transformed the school she took over and it is unrecognisable today. Through her leadership she has ensured that hundreds of children have had the best start in their educational life.
Also retiring is Roy Roberts – one of the longest serving governors at New Hall. Roy has dedicated a significant proportion of his life to Sutton both as Governor and previously through his role as a ward support officer.
I want to wish all the staff at schools across Sutton Coldfield a restful break before the new academic year in September.
Meeting Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council to Discuss Remembrance Day
I had an extremely useful meeting today to discuss this year’s Remembrance Day celebrations. This year – with the agreement of the Royal Town’s British Legion and the town church Holy Trinity (and above all our Town Council who have so kindly agreed to do the necessary organising bureaucratic endeavour).
The church service will start at the earlier time of 09:30 and we will assemble thereafter at the Royal Town’s War Memorial and recognise the 11 am silence on the parade there.
This will be likely to lead to a much bigger and better organised parade and solemn ceremony led, as ever, by the Town’s Sea Cadets and honouring our local British Legion led by Roy Hubbard.
Road closures will secure the area and stop the irritation of cars driving too close to the ceremony.
In the year the war returned to Europe with a barbarity and misery we thought we’d consigned to the history books, these things matter very much.
Parliament
Petition Debate – Dignity in Dying
Last week I met with my constituent Lyn Ellis to talk about the suffering her husband endured while he was dying of prostate cancer.
This week, I took her story to the floor of Westminster Hall, where I spoke in the debate triggered by a public petition calling for the legalisation of assisted dying.
Here is an excerpt of my speech:
“Last Friday, in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield, I met Lyn Ellis, a constituent from Wylde Green whose husband died from prostate cancer. During covid, he was told that he had three to six months to live, and he died not long afterwards. Lyn told me:
“Until you’ve been through something like this, you don’t realise how hollow the argument is that there is a palliative answer. As John died, he shrank to nothing; he couldn’t eat; he was in pain; suicidal. I felt we’d been cheated. What could be a better way to go than a glass of champagne and saying goodbye to each other?
Those last few weeks of his life were incredibly painful; he shut down, wouldn’t speak, and we’d always had such a close and loving relationship. I feel the state let me down. A good and decent country would not have put us through this.”
We in the Commons have not been asked to vote on assisted dying for almost seven years. A great deal has changed in that time: California, Colorado, New Jersey, Maine, and even the District of Columbia have legislated for choice at the end of life. In just the past five years, every state in Australia has passed laws on assisted dying; New Zealand, too, legislated on assisted dying.
Right now, some people with terminal illnesses feel they have no other option than to take their own life into their own hands. They do so privately and alone so as not to incriminate their loved ones, and they often do so in violent and distressing ways.
We have evidence of the harm caused by our existing laws, and it is clear from every opinion poll on the subject that assisted dying is a unifying issue for people across the country.
We cannot continue to let dying people’s suffering go unanswered; it is time for dignity, for compassion, and for a choice at the end of life.
The full speech can be found here: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2022-07-04/debates/65B4AB0B-D148-42C6-8D8B-43AAC29219FB/AssistedDying#contribution-61560EAB-5CE0-45BF-A9FD-FCF5BC0D0937
Debate on International Development Strategy
I took part in a debate on the future of international development, where I highlighted the importance of UK development money as a means to strengthen British security and ensuring value for British taxpayers.
In that context, I turned my attention to the illogical policy of giving aid money to China. The country does not need our support and China is not a development priority area. Indeed, there is no justification for UK taxpayers’ money being spent in this way. Aid to China must be stopped.
“In 2009, the Conservative Opposition decided that all development money for China would end. We did that because China has roared out of poverty; if we look at what China and India have done for poverty alleviation, we see that the results are sensationally good. China has done so much to tackle poverty and its GDP is bigger than ours, so there was clearly no case for expecting the British taxpayer to pay any money at all for development in China. I was sent by David Cameron to inform Madam Fu, the Chinese ambassador, of the decision that if we were elected and had the privilege of forming a Government, there would be no more ODA spend to China. She gave me a tremendous ticking off, but the Chinese accepted it.
When we went into government in 2010, the first thing I did when I had the privilege and honour of going into my new DFID office was to say, “No more ODA money for China. That was our commitment at the election to our constituents, and unless it’s legally due now, there’s to be no more ODA spend in China.” Basically, since that day, DFID—when it was DFID—has not spent money in China. There were long-tail projects that it could not end, but apart from that, it did not spend any more.
Significant money continues to be spent in China, however, by the Foreign Office, and it is not really development money. Providing that money is, the Foreign Office thinks, the best way to suck up to the Chinese Government, but it is not spent sensibly. Between 2009 and 2011, in the incoming years of the Conservative Government, the expenditure was reduced from £49 million to £15 million. Between 2014 and 2019, however, that ODA expenditure—taxpayers’ money—on the development budget in China rose from £23 million to £68 million. That was the highest figure, but I understand that it was £64 million in 2020. What on earth are the Government doing spending ODA money in China? We promised the electorate that we would not do it. DFID did not do it. It is not a development priority, there is no case for it and it should be stopped.”