🌳 To celebrate the 70th birthday of the Peak District National Park on Saturday, I wrote a piece for the Sheffield Star, commemorating the work of my historic constituent Ethel Haythornthwaite and the Sheffield trespassers.
✊ I also spoke during a debate in Parliament, opposing the government’s plans to make trespass a criminal offence attack the right of a whole community of people – the Gypsy Roma and Traveller Community – to live as they wish. As a Sheffield MP I will continue the tradition of our city’s forebears and fight any attempts to criminalise our right to roam.
🔥Following the news that there have been 702 reported incidents of burning in Yorkshire since Oct – a 21% increase on the previous season – I coordinated a letter, signed by 30 MPs and Lords, calling on the Government to tighten their proposed legislation and strengthen current enforcement so that the burning season just passed is the last.
🛒This week the Public Accounts Committee, of which I am a member, found that hundreds of thousands of clinically vulnerable people may have been unable to receive support whilst shielding, because they were not initially labelled as clinically vulnerable. I spoke to the Star and the Yorkshire Post about the report and called on the Government to adopt our recommendations and learn from the early stages of the crisis to ensure this doesn’t happen again. You can read our full report here.
⚖After cross-party opposition, Ministers conceded there should be no impunity for torture, genocide or crimes against humanity in their Overseas Operations Bill. But they’ve not gone nearly far enough. This week I supported amendments to the Bill to ensure survivors of war crimes have access to justice. You can watch my speech here.
🏥 I met with eating disorder campaigner Hope Virgo from the Dump the Scales campaign and Dr Ashish Kumar to hear about the growing crisis facing our frontline eating disorder services and discuss what more needs to be done to improve treatment.
👂I attended a great meeting with the all partly parliamentary group on ME/CFS earlier in the week to discuss the impact of the pandemic on people with ME. We heard from some excellent speakers about the clinical overlaps between ME and Long Covid, and JCVI guidance for ME patient prioritisation.
🏫 I spoke to Inside Government about our work on the All Party Parliamentary Group on SEND about our current priorities, SEND Provision, and how the pandemic has affected children and young people with SEND. You can read the interview here.
🌎I also joined other Yorkshire & the Humber MPs for a roundtable organised by the University of Leeds to discuss climate action and explore partnerships for climate action in Yorkshire and the Humber.