Weekly Round-Up

Every week the Prime Minister continues to defend the indefensible Downing Street parties. Last week’s defence was ridiculous, this week’s defence is hopeless and each week the defence unravels.

Last week, he said he didn’t realise he was at a party. This week he’s got a new defence: Nobody warned me that it was against the rules. The Prime Minister wrote the rules, so it’s no wonder the public have stopped believing a word he is saying.

The Prime Minister has been forced to hand an apology to Her Majesty the Queen for the party in his office the night before Prince Philip’s funeral -  it’s time he also handed in his resignation.

Living with Covid

For the Government, ‘living with covid’ is just an empty slogan with no plan. For some of the fanatics on the Conservative backbenches, ‘living with covid’ means letting the virus rip. Both positions are highly irresponsible.

Labour’s plan to learn to live well with Covid will prepare us for the next waves of infections and protect our lives, livelihoods and liberties.

With Labour’s plan, we would:

·    Retain a Jabs Army of volunteers who could rapidly rollout a vaccine, easing the pressure on the NHS

·   Draw up a roadmap for decision-making, to give certainty on what action should be considered when

·    Work with British manufacturers to make sure we always have a supply of tests when we need them

·   Stop the Conservatives’ sell-off of the UK’s Vaccine Manufacturing Centre


We must never again allow our NHS to be run down the way it was by Conservative governments, who left it with the highest waiting lists on record.

It’s not that they didn’t fix the roof when the sun was shining, they dismantled the roof and removed the floorboards.

ECAA Visas

At Home Office questions on Monday I raised the ongoing issue, facing a number of constituents, of people resident in the UK on ECAA (Ankara Agreement) visas not being able to get them renewed.

Since then, I have received hundreds of emails from people affected by this across the country and will be meeting the minister to raise this issue directly with him.

It is totally unfair that through no fault of their own, people are having their lives placed on hold.

The sheer incompetence of the Home Office to manage these cases is staggering, and I’ll continue to hold them to account.