This week has been dominated by the very sad news of the death of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh. I have written to Her Majesty, The Queen to pass on my condolences and those of my constituents. I know that some of you will have known Prince Philip through the armed forces, Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme or charities. It has been interesting to read about his life and hear anecdotes from those who knew him.
We are lucky to have a Royal Family that puts so much time into supporting communities and I know how much people appreciate everything they do.
This week also brought the lifting of further Covid restrictions, and I hope that you have had time to go shopping and have a meal or drink outside a pub. The cold weather has not helped and I am looking forward to warmer days soon. The vaccine continues to be given with many now receiving their second dose. I attended a meeting this week with the vaccine minister to hear about the issues with the AstraZeneca vaccine and it remains very safe indeed.
The fact is over 20 million doses of the AZ vaccine have been administered with 17 deaths that might or might not be linked to having it. Please have the utmost confidence in receiving it. You are far more likely to get blood clots with Covid than with the vaccine, which is very effective at preventing Covid. I hope that this will not stop the rollout any further. There is still concern from the scientists that we may receive another wave of coronavirus as they have done in other countries, so we must make sure that we have some resistance through vaccinations.
Good news locally is that Owslebury is receiving vouchers from Building Digital UK to improve its broadband. This is a Government-funded initiative to help communities with poor access to broadband internet. A new phase of the voucher scheme opened last week and I am working with other villages to make sure that they can take part in it.
The Government is investing £5 billion through Project Gigabit to improve connectivity nationwide, and eligible communities can bid for vouchers to help cover the cost of upgrading connections. The latest information on the scheme is online at https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/
One of my priorities is to make sure that every constituent has access to fast broadband. I am continually writing to Openreach and Ministers on this.
I was pleased to hear this week that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Zoos is coming to Marwell Zoo in June. We have been working with zoos to help them through this pandemic, although conservation zoos like Marwell have found it more difficult to get grants.
I know that they were fully booked the first week of reopening and I am looking forward to visiting soon. This is a great Meon Valley asset and when my children were small, we had family membership and used to visit most weeks.
On Thursday, I was on a Facebook Live event with Donna Jones, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner candidate and two of our neighbouring MPs, Damian Hinds and Steve Brine. We discussed a range of issues that constituents put to us. It is important that we work closely with our PCC to ensure that we get the policing that we would like in our communities. Some of the issues that I will be working with the next PCC on will be: noisy and speeding motorbikes, fly-tipping, rural crime and travellers.
We also talked about online crime and some of the scams that are circulating. One of the latest ones is asking for money to pay to release a parcel by Royal Mail. I have had a couple of these so I hope that you have ignored them too. It is very difficult to know which are the genuine calls and emails so I hope that we can have a better campaign to alert people about the latest ones and I will be working with the PCC on this.
I had a lot of other meetings this week including a one-to-one with Sir Kevan Collins who has been appointed by the Prime Minister to put a strategy into place for catching up with children’s education. I have been doing a lot of work on education since my paper last year and it is always helpful to speak to people like Sir Kevan, as well as teaching unions, to listen to what they are saying. It is always helpful to know that others like your ideas!
Have a great weekend.
