The highlight of my week was launching my 10-minute rule bill in Parliament on Tuesday concerning the register for not in school children. It received quite a lot of publicity including the Israel Times as a group of Orthodox Jews protested about it outside Parliament in the morning.
I think if they had waited to hear my speech, they would have realised that it is not a threat to them or anyone that is actually teaching children. This is very much for those children who are not receiving an education at all and it will enable local authorities to identify them and put in support.
The Local Government Association is very keen on having this in legislation as it has no powers to do it officially at the moment. Although I know some local authorities do visit home educated children, they know that not every ‘home educated’ is being identified.
I will now work with the Department for Education to put this into legislation. We looked at persistent absence in the Education Select Committee I sit on too. It is very worrying, especially as it includes many children with special educational needs who are not being given the right support.
On Monday, I was able to praise the Royal Air Force and the work it did evacuating 2500 people from over 26 countries from Sudan under immense pressure and danger. It is rumoured the UK took more of other countries’ nationals than they had but it was deemed not to be diplomatic to say that. My year with the RAF is coming to an end soon and I will have covered all three services, plus the year at the Royal College of Defence Studies.
Also on Monday, I went up the Queen Elizabeth Tower – commonly known as Big Ben - to see where the money has been spent and see how the public tours will be conducted. These start in June and it is very interesting but you do need to climb up over 300 steps.
On Monday evening, the Prime Minister invited Conservative MPs to a party in his garden with huge pork pies made in Yorkshire, the standard of food has certainly improved at No 10 and it is all paid for personally by the PM.
On Wednesday I attended the Countryside Alliance Awards and saw West Meon Village Shop receiving runner up in the community village shop category. This was out of 15,000 village shops so we are very lucky to have them in the constituency.
The Hinton Arms also got to the final but sadly lost out. These awards really show how important local shops and pubs are to the community but it is very much for us all to use them so they can survive.
On Wednesday afternoon, I had a meeting with Dominican Republican MPs who were interested in how our police force was structured. I explained about how we did not have a national police force but 43 forces in England and Wales plus Scotland and Northern Ireland, they were very intrigued.
I then went onto speak in a panel with opposition MPs on Palestine where I spoke about the lack of succession planning for when President Mahmoud Abbas stands down and about education. Sadly Israel, which has a world class education system and research, has just demolished a Palestinian school and others are marked for demolition.
There is a lot of work to do to solve this issue and we need to work hard with both sides. I will be going to Palestine during recess to see what is happening on the ground.
In the Public Accounts committee on Thursday, we talked about Child Trust Funds and the large number of young people who are turning 18 but not accessing them. These were established in 2002 for all children born and phased out in 2011 so if you know any children that have a trust fund, please remind them to have a look for theirs and they can take the money out when they turn 18.
There were no votes this week. The Victims and Prisoners Bill passed second reading and now goes to committee stage where there will be some amendments. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill also passed second reading on Wednesday and there were two SNP backbench debates on Tuesday.
I also popped into the Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Action week to hear about how services in Meon Valley are going. We are at the national average for diagnosis times, I will be finding out how we can improve this.
Yesterday evening I attended the Wickham and Knowle Annual Assembly where it recognised all the amazing work that local people had done over the year, including a photographic competition.
It is nice to see people being rewarded for the work that they do and it was good to see Therese Evans being recognised for her 28 years of public service. Therese joined Winchester city council a year before I did.
It was also lovely to see recognition for the work of parish councillors like Helen Manuel. Thank you to everyone for all that you are doing.
Lastly, I have had comments that the noise from motorbikes has improved since we put in the speed cameras. It would be good to hear from others that this is the case. Once the pilot schemes for acoustic cameras have finished, we will be putting a bid in for those too but that is a couple of years away, I suspect.
Have a great weekend.
