This Government has failed to put in place a proper financial support package for those struggling to afford self-isolation. It means that only 3 in 10 people are following the instruction to self-isolate when contacted by Test and Trace.
I'll continue pressing the Government to step up and support those struggling to afford self-isolation.
I have been working hard to press the Government to ensure that every child has access to regular, nutritious, healthy food. Last month, I signed Emma Lewell-Buck MP's letter to the Minister for Children and Families to urge the Government to scale up school breakfast funding and make support to schools permanent. See more here.
We have now received this response from the minister. Read the letter in full by clicking the pdf attachment below.
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.
The big event in Parliament this week was the Budget and I challenged the Chancellor for its complete lack of vision. There was little in it for supporting people into affordable homes, it failed to properly grapple with the transition to a net zero carbon economy, and there was no long term plan for social care.
Today's Budget lacked any vision for:
See my full speech here.
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.
This week the Government failed to protect leaseholders from bankrupting cladding costs in the Fire Safety Bill. The cladding scandal is the biggest consumer and fire safety failure in a generation. I challenged the Government on this in my speech at the debate (see the video here and the transcript here).
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.
A judicial review this month found the Government had acted unlawfully by failing to publish on time the contracts for PPE procurement signed at the beginning of the pandemic. The Public Accounts Committee also called out the Government on its late publication of contracts. The Government’s response has been to selectively quote from a National Audit Office report by suggesting that the NAO concluded there was never a national shortage of PPE (when, in fact, the NAO was simply quoting what NHS providers had told it).