Dear Friend,
It has been a busy time for me back in Parliament as minister for Water and Flooding and sometimes it feels as if my feet have hardly touched the ground.
I was proud to see my first bill as a minister introduced to Parliament in September, and to begin to deliver on the promises to clean up our rivers and seas I stood on as a candidate in the General Election.
We promised we would be tough on water companies dumping sewage in Britain’s waterways and after just 62 days of a Labour government, I introduced the Water (Special Measures) Bill to Parliament.
This bill will give regulators new powers to take tougher and faster action to crack down on water companies damaging the environment and failing their customers including-
- Bringing criminal charges against persistent lawbreakers, including imprisonment
- Banning the payment of bonuses to executives of water companies
- Introducing severe and automatic fines for offences
- Ensuring independent monitoring of every outlet
- Widening measures in the bill to strengthen regulation
- Widening water sector reform
Of course, there is more to do but we have made a strong start on the road to restoring our waterways and seas.
NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England public consultation
A huge task facing us in the new government is restoring the NHS. It has been there for us for over 76 years, but to make sure it is here for the next 76 years, doing all it can to support the health of everyone, we need to make changes. Of course it needs proper funding, but the world is changing quickly, and the NHS needs to change with it.
So we want to have the biggest ever conversation about the future of the NHS, and we want you to be a part of it, whether that’s as a member of the public, a patient, staff, or as a member of health or the care industry.
It doesn’t matter whether you have a lot or a little to say. Your views, experiences and ideas will shape a new 10 Year Health Plan for England.
We have created a dedicated website and questionnaires at Change.NHS.uk as a part of creating a health service fit for the future. This is an early opportunity to share your insights as we begin an extensive programme of engagement to develop the 10 Year Health Plan. If you register your email address, we will stay in touch so we can continue to seek your views as the 10 Year Health Plan develops.
Hull City Council consultation on current Public Spaces Protection Orders
There is also a local consultation process underway which you might want to contribute to.
A Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) can be used to deal with the consumption of alcohol in public spaces where it is, or is likely to be, detrimental to the local community’s quality of life.
The current Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) in Hull is due for renewal March 2025 and Hull City Council is holding a consultation to give residents, businesses and visitors the opportunity to comment on the proposed prohibitions.
If you are a resident, visitor, worker or run a business in the following wards
- Drypool
- St Andrews and Dockland
- Newington and Gipsyville
- Avenue
- Bricknell
- Central
- Orchard Park
- University
- Beverley and Newland
The council want your input. Have your say here. The consultation closes 2 December 2024.
The Big Conversation
The Big Conversation has been a Big Success again, and I have really enjoyed being out and about in the constituency. It was really interesting talking to students at Ron Dearing UTC about their hopes and fears for the future.
They were a bright and ambitious group and our conversations left me feeling optimistic.
I also met veterans at the Hull 4 Heroes Armed Forces Community Hub and discussed Labour’s Homes for Heroes policy, which will guarantee our veterans have a roof over their heads. I also took the BC to the “new” part of the constituency at St Andrews Church in Kirkella, where I spoke with the Rector and church leadership about issues which can affect people in the community, such as loneliness.
Small businesses are the backbone of our local economy and I met with the Hull Federation of Small Businesses to discuss how we can support them to thrive, including doing more to ensure businesses stay connected with one another and how we can encourage people to shop with their local small businesses.
I held an online webinar on dentistry and was delighted to learn that a Centre for Dental Development will be opening soon in Hull, which will allow students to learn here (and hopefully stay after qualification) and will take people from NHS waiting lists across the city to ease the backlog.
Menopause Hull 2024 event
After last year’s success, I am excited to be working with the fantastic women in the Menopaus’ull Support Network team to put on the Menopause Hull 2024 event at Princes Quay Shopping Centre, from 11:00 am – 3:00 pm. The menopause affects half of our population at some point in their lives and is so often more than a few “hot flushes”. Events like this help increase understanding and awareness and provide support and sign-posting to those who need it.
It is promising to be a great event once again so I hope that lots of you will come along!
Back to school with RE: Uniform
It’s over five years since I sat in an Education Select Committee hearing, listening to mothers explaining how they had to skip meals to be able to afford school uniform. That shocking testimony drove me to work with some fantastic people locally in the creation of RE:Uniform.
It’s the start of the new school year, so they have been busy again with the redistribution of unwanted but perfectly usable school uniform in Hull and the East Riding, keeping it out of landfill and saving parents much-needed money. They even found time to get a photo of them all together. Brilliant!
RNIB walk
The RNIB took the saying “walk a mile in another’s shoes” literally and arranged for me to go on a guided walk in Hull city centre wearing a special pair of glasses.
I’ve worked closely with the RNIB for a while and thought I had a grasp of the barriers blind and visually impaired people face but the walk proved I really had no clue.
I felt incredibly vulnerable; it really brought home the barriers those with sight loss face trying to maintain their independence, and what can be done to help.
Pavement parking
A particular hazard for those with visual impairment – and many others with a disability, people with pushchairs and sometimes anybody at all trying to get past is pavement parking.
Local Authorities have very limited powers to prevent pavement parking, and I raised this matter with the previous government on a number of occasions through a series of Parliamentary Written Questions. They halted a private member’s Bill on pavement parking with the promise of a public consultation on how new legislation should look. Although the consultation was held, it closed in 2020 and the government never published a summary and response, despite promising to do so.
After the General Election. I wrote to the new Secretary of State.
I am pleased to report that I received a reply from Lilian Greenwood, Minister for the Future of Roads, saying her plan is to publish a formal response to the consultation, summarising the views received and announcing the Government’s next steps for pavement parking policy.
It looks like we will finally get some progress – all it took was four years and General Election!
Biowise
As MP for the new constituency of West Hull and Haltemprice I now have a lot of constituents affected by odour from the Biowise plant which processes household organic waste to produce compost.
Judging from the emails I have received, although work has been undertaken at the plant there are still issues with odours, so I began correspondence with Biowise and the Environment Agency.
I attended the community liaison meeting held by Biowise on September 19 along with representatives of the Environment Agency, Environmental Health, East Riding and Hull City Councils, and local councillors.
Biowise has now completed all the improvements on site requested by the Environment Agency which were determined by ‘Best Available Techniques’. These included adding covers to bays and a carbon filtration system for the leachate tank.
This was followed by the first period of monitoring from June to the end of August, which was undertaken by an accredited third party, with the protocol designed by the national EA odour team. Its purpose is to check the efficacy of the improvements, identify the processes and activities where odour is generated and to quantify it to allow meaningful comparison with the next round of monitoring in summer 2025. The first results are expected later in the Autumn.
At the meeting I shared my opinion that the results will be invaluable for getting a clear idea of what activities are causing the most odour and how they might be used to help develop action plans to further reduce it.
I have also obtained a definition of the 1-6 smell scale used by the EA and other agencies and thought you might find it helpful too. Feel free to share it.
Intensity
0 – No odour
1 – Very faint odour (need to inhale into the wind to smell anything)
2 – Faint odour (you can detect an odour when you breathe normally)
3 – Distinct odour (there is clearly an odour in the air as you leave your car or enter the area)
4 – Strong odour (a bearable odour but strong, you could stay in the area for some time)
5 – Very strong odour (unpleasantly strong, you will want to leave the area quickly)
6 – Extremely strong odour (likely to cause nausea and a strong need to remove yourself from the odour immediately)
It is useful to include this when making a complaint to the EA, which is best done on the Environment incident hotline: 0800 80 70 60 (24-hour service)
The next steps following the meeting will be to look at what the monitoring data is saying, and I will be following up with EA on the timetable for that information which it was agreed will be publicly available.
Legacy Independent Funeral Directors and the Fuller Report
The Fuller Inquiry was established to investigate how David Fuller was able to carry out inappropriate and unlawful actions in the mortuaries at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust and why they went apparently unnoticed. It began before the awful circumstances around Legacy Independent Funeral Directors became known, but phase 2 of its inquiry looked at the broader national picture on procedures and practices in any settings where deceased people are kept, regarding the security and dignity of the deceased.
It has published its phase 2 interim report, and although it could not take evidence directly from those affected by Legacy due to the ongoing legal proceedings, the Inquiry was very much aware of what had happened and its findings will resonate deeply with people in Hull and East Yorkshire.
It makes five recommendations, the first of which is that the UK government should establish an independent statutory regulatory regime for funeral directors in England as a matter of urgency. It emphasises the need for action by saying “The Inquiry would expect to be informed by the government what this statutory regulatory regime will be before publication of the Inquiry’s Final Report.”
It goes on to recommend the new standards and regulations should cover the whole journey of the deceased, not just funeral directors, and that direct cremation businesses should also be included.
The full report can be found here
In September we passed the six-month mark since our community was shaken to its core by the revelations of what had happened at Legacy. My thoughts continue to be with the family, friends and loved ones of the victims of these awful crimes. Needless to say, I will be giving these recommendations my wholehearted backing and will be pressing the government to act on them without delay in the hope they will ensure the terrible events of Legacy and the suffering of the families and loved ones affected can never be repeated.
Get Green!
A chance to get outside, get your hands dirty and do something positive for nature this weekend!
Volunteers are needed to plant 4,000 wildflowers and 120 trees at Humber Bridge Country Park. Sessions will be held from Saturday 26 to Monday 28 October. Wildflower meadows help bees, butterflies and other creatures thrive and spending time in them is good for the soul. Further details here.