Parliament is currently in recess. My last spoken contribution, on the last day, was a speech on housing and planning issues which you can watch on my website or Facebook page. I tried (within a 3-minute limit for us all!) to get across why quite a number of constituents have concerns ahead of us seeing the proposed legislation later in the year. Contrary to the impression given by news articles, the definitive proposals haven’t been published yet, and I am hopeful the concerns that I and others are expressing will be factored into them.
If you listen to some national journalists – of course not esteemed Herald/Oxford Mail ones – recess is some sort of long holiday for MPs. The reality is I am as busy as ever, and I have filled the days with surgery appointments, meetings with constituents and visits to local organisations given that I can do them every day, where usually I have to be in London Monday-Thursday when parliament is sitting.
I’m back at home in Didcot for most of recess and one of the best things about this summer compared to last year is all the events that are taking place across the constituency. I’ve had a great time wellie wanging at the Letcombe Fun Day and attending celebration events like the anniversary for the Driving Miss Daisy service and the garden party of the Didcot Good Neighbour Scheme, which I recently became a volunteer for.
One event was the fundraising football game at Cholsey Recreation Ground in memory of Charlie Allum, who was a player and manager for Wallingford Town FC, but sadly lost his battle against the rare cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, in 2011 – his son Chris is helping to raise money for the charity AMMF, the only charity dedicated to this particular disease.
I’ve spent a few more hours at Harwell’s space cluster, where there are the largest number of space organisations within walking distance of one another anywhere in the world and we’ve welcomed the Vaccines Minister, Nadhim Zahawi. There’s been table tennis at Richmond Retirement Village and questions from young people on the National Citizens Service; plenty of the constituency’s 85 pubs for lunches and chats, and catch-ups with charities such as Sofea.
Besides this, I’ve written my letter to Alok Sharma, President of COP26, outlining what came out of my pre-COP26 summit in July (again, you can read it on my website/Facebook page and I’ll publish his reply) and continued my Opportunity Gap project with Claire Coutinho – our first report will be on the role of parents.
So recess doesn’t involve much rest. But it’s been great fun so far and its nice to see the local area coming to life again.
