Read my Monthly Report for March 2021 here
I join with my colleague Sue Hayman, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, when she says of the recent River Lea industrial oil spill: ‘We must try and stop this happening ever again’.
I have written to the Environment Agency (EA), urging that action be taken to contain such waste spills into the river, and for longer term planning to make sure better provision is in place to tackle such crises.
I am pressing the Home Office to provide the proper and adequate resources required to deal with the new fast-route EU citizens settlement programme they are planning to introduce by November this year.
The Government has also declared an amnesty on Commonwealth citizens and is having to implement a helpline and support for the Windrush generation, which will extend to others.
I have asked the minister: ‘Does she seriously believe that, practically, the Home Office and the Government have the resources to deal with this, and can she reassure my constituents?’
The Home Office has finally acknowledged its responsibility to British Citizens from the Caribbean - the Windrush generation. I am supporting a number of constituents.
But now, shockingly, we are finding other Commonwealth citizens who are in the same position. Where will all this end?
They are originally from Africa, but they are British, and yet they do not have the paperwork to prove it. The paper Immigration and Nationality Directorate letters that people come to my advice surgeries clutching have been enough to get them a job and their entitlements up to now.
I have been challenging the Government time and again on the costs of Brexit. We are still woefully short on information, but I am on the march, with others, so I warn the Government - they had better be prepared.
The Public Accounts Committee, which I chair, and the Treasury Committee, are already pressing the Treasury and other Government departments about what the total cost will be.
The law on use of digital images and consent needs to be changed.
Speaking in the House recently, I said the current law does not appear to recognise the difference between viewing someone naked, and filming/photographing someone naked - without consent.
Would most people be happy being deliberately filmed or photographed doing a private act, without having consented to the video or photo – filmed by another person (partner, spouse or stranger) - despite the fact that the other person was present with them whilst the private act was being carried out?