News

Eligible Band A-D households will receive a £100 Household Energy Payment to help with rising energy costs, with around 40,450 properties in North Northumberland set to benefit.

“All Together Now” was the Prime Minister’s rallying call. For me, that means rediscovering the belief that we don’t have to tear each other apart. We can disagree with respect and still find the common ground where we can work together.

I know many of you have questions about the situation with Berwick Hospital, which is now due to be completed in 2028. This delay is extremely disappointing. However, there is now a clear plan to completion, and I wanted to share the latest information from the Trust.

I’m delighted that the crossing at Guyzance/Swarland is set to receive an upgrade in the new year. After two years of lobbying, and decades of unsafe driving we are seeing action.

I fully welcome the democratic rejection of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Read my thoughts and my speech below.

This ambitious Bill aims to help families during those crucial 1001 first days of a baby’s life; by giving legal backing for supporting babies in their first years. That can and should include bespoke projects which provide really skilled 24-hour support for our most vulnerable families.

This final essay asks the deepest question. Not what the state should do, or what the economy should look like, or even what kind of nation we should be. But what kind of people – what kind of citizen – does a covenantal nation require?

What is our role in newly volatile world? Russia’s war on Ukraine and China’s growing power represent the most obvious concerns, but the foreign policy of the Trump administration has also thrown our foreign policy equation out of balance. It remains to be seen how this will develop, but we shouldn’t make any lazy assumptions that the world will ever go back to the old ways.

Building a collective national story is essential, rather than letting people retreat into separate, competing ones. Read the third part of A Politics of Belonging and let me know your views.

A place-based economy, with skills that root people in a trade, finance that backs local businesses, and shared obligations between workers and companies, would begin to improve the world of work. None of this is new or unrealistic – these are things which this country has done before and can do again.