It is vital that COVID-19 vaccination centres are accessible for everyone, including people with sight loss.
I wrote to the Minister for Vaccine Deployment and asked him to outline how the Government is ensuring that COVID-19 vaccination centres are fully accessible. You can read his response here and click on the pdf link below to download and read the letter in full.
If you, or anyone you know, needs to use the Foodbank, please note that vouchers must be acquired through referral agencies. Many of these organisations have moved their services online.
The Government announced a further £3.5 billion to help with the removal of cladding for buildings over 18m. This is a welcome step, but it does not go far enough to protect all leaseholders impacted by the cladding scandal. There also remains a lot of unanswered questions surrounding how the money will be allocated and how the loan scheme for low-rise buildings will work. I am pursuing the details on this.
The Craftivist Collective, established and run by Haggerston local Sarah Corbett, is a form of ‘gentle protest’ that combines activism with creating carefully crafted pieces of work.
Most recently, Sarah has been spearheading the climate craftivist project, which encourages sewers to create beautiful hand-sewn badges for MPs to wear and express solidarity with tackling the climate emergency in advance of COP26.
Business and workers in the creative industries have been hit with the double whammy of COVID-19 and Brexit.
It is vital the March 2021 Budget does not act as a cliff-edge with the large-scale withdrawal of all support for workers and businesses in this industry. I’ll continue working with my frontbench Labour colleagues to urge the Government to ensure support is targeted for those businesses and workers impacted by the COVID-19 restrictions.
Creative industry workers and businesses have been hit with the double whammy of Brexit and COVID-19.
Thank you to Alison McGovern MP, Shadow Minister for the Creative Industries, and all the Hackney creatives who joined today's roundtable on the impact of Brexit and COVID-19 on the creative industries.
Real life examples can make a difference in pressing the Government - please email me to continue feeding in your experience.
I remain hugely concerned about the impact on children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, of a loss of face-to-face teaching. In Hackney we had seen the gap in attainment narrowing significantly; the pandemic is reversing this progress. Students who study practical and artistic subjects at school are also particularly disadvantaged when forced to learn from home.
On this important day normally I meet with others in Hackney and have the privilege of hearing from survivors of the Holocaust. This year, due to COVID-19, I attended a virtual memorial event and filmed a video on this year’s theme “be the light in the darkness.”
On the 31 December 2020, the Government announced that Hackney primary schools were excluded from the list of boroughs whose school terms were due to be delayed on public health grounds.
This decision did not reflect the advice for London from public health experts. I joined colleagues to call on the Secretary of State for Educaton to urgently reconsider this decision. See the full text of the letter below.
My office will be shut over the Christmas period and will re-open on Monday 4th 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.