As the dust begins to settle here in Westminster, there is no denying it certainly has been a busy few weeks in politics. Many of you are understandably asking me my position in the latest Conservative leadership election, and it feels only right I come on here and share this with you. Accountability and transparency are traits important to me, and I know they are to my constituents too. So, I thought I’d write a short post to update folks on what I’ve been up to for MK, my priorities and notwithstanding the elephant in the room of a second leadership election, what has shaped my thinking and where we are now.
Although the media only shows a snippet of what we do here in Parliament, behind the media circus my team and I have been keeping our heads down and working full tilt for the people of Milton Keynes. I am cracking on with casework, sitting on Bill Committees to help write and develop legislation and raising and representing residents in Westminster and MK.
I have prioritised helping dozens and dozens of constituents with casework, continued to campaign for a new university in Milton Keynes and met ministers to lobby for this. I’ve worked with the academic partners and continue to raise the issue in Parliament. I’ve pushed bosses at Stagecoach East for a solution to residents’ concerns about the no 41 bus route, securing assurances that they’ll include MK in their forthcoming Rural Connectivity Summit. This is just a short snippet of what I do day to day, and if you have a local or national concern you’d like me to address please send me an email to [email protected].
With a second leadership election for the Conservative party, there were lots of factors I had to weigh up when making my decision. I am the first to admit that there’s a lot of baggage that would have come with Boris 2.0, there is no denying this. In the end, for me it came down to the national interest. He has proven he can weather any storm he is faced with, and despite media noise he gets on the job. And there’s a lot of that at the moment. It’s his resilience that I thought our country could do with right now. This for me wasn’t about my job, my career here in Parliament or blind loyalty. I truly felt that he would be able to push through all the faff and kerfuffle from the press and deliver a better state for the country. We need to steady the ship, so that my constituents aren’t faced with rising energy bills. What people need right now is certainty. We need stronger job security, and an economy that means we can continue to fund key public services like our NHS, crack down on crime, and give our children a better society in the future. I hope that whatever your views are, you can understand my decisions and how I weighed up the choices presented to me. I could have kept my head down, but I didn’t. I made a choice.
Despite this, here in Westminster MPs have been delivering legislation. Reducing stamp duty to cut down the cost of moving house, giving police more powers to act when protesters try to disrupt peoples lives, taking action to address the rising cost of energy because of Putin’s war in Ukraine and reversing the planned rise in National Insurance – something I took a stand on and voted against the government last year.
Since July and throughout last week, colleagues and I were working on the committee stage of the National Security Bill. It’s a hugely important bit of legislation, updating our espionage laws to counter 21st century threats. We worked hard to get it over the line last week. It’s now ready for second reading. Our safety and security is rightly a fundamental priority.
I hope that this post has helped to clarify questions and I look forward to being able to put these past few weeks of instability to bed and getting on with the job at hand. Now I want to hear from you, let me know in the comments. What MK issues do you think should MPs debate in Parliament?