My office will be shut over the Christmas period from 1pm on Friday 24 December and will re-open on Tuesday 4 January. During that time my emails and phones will not be monitored daily. 

For urgent assistance, please see below for a list of services that should be able to offer assistance.

I hope you all have a safe festive period.

There's a good part-time job opportunity at Hackney City Farm as an Eco Therapy Facilitator for the Common Earth group.

The group formed out of a collaboration between the Gaia Therapy Collective, a newly formed collective of politically engaged eco-therapists located at Hackney City Farm, and the farm itself.

It has been running for the past year and is for people of colour who are feeling lonely or isolated to develop healthy relationships with themselves, each other, and the wider natural world.

I recently met with the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Helen Whately MP, to raise concerns about the impact of these proposals on small brewers. Please click the pdf link below for a government briefing on the issue, which may be of interest. 

There is a clear need to strengthen protections and legislate to tackle violence against women. I wrote to the Government and urged it to step up its actions in tackling violence against women and girls. Click the pdf link below to read the response I received.

Hackney families were recently hit by a £20 per week cut to Universal Credit. There are 16,760 households in Hackney South and Shoreditch on Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit, which meant a total cut of £17,430,400 in our constituency. 6 in 10 of all single-parent families in the UK will be hit. It will bring the basic rate of benefits to its lowest level since 1990.