News

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.

My speech in full, from Wednesday’s adjournment debate on A1 safety. I want to see all options on the table for making this main route safer.

‘The A1 dominates the lives of my constituents in North Northumberland. It is unsafe, lacks resilience and capacity, and is not fit for the future of a region that is booming in tourism and has so much to offer. It hangs over every journey that my constituents make.’

‘We want to be a generous, opening and welcome country. But we are also concerned about the lack of control that successive governments have had over our own borders.’