MP’s REPORT TO 

RESIDENTS: April 2020

I provide regular updates on my work to local residents.

 

You can find previous reports of my work on my web site; www.ruthcadbury.co.uk  I also report regularly on my Facebook page and via Twitter and Instagram @RuthCadbury. You can see full details of my questions and speeches in Parliament, and get Regular updates about my Parliamentary activities on TheyWorkForYou in Hansard and on YouTube

See my special Coronavirus Web-page for information on

local and national services, help-lines and volunteering;

 and to sign up for Hounslow Council’s daily updates.

Covid19 Coronavirus

Parliament has shut down and I and my team are all now working from home. 

Like all MPs and their staff, we are inundated with calls and emails from constituents with a host of pressing problems, generally raised with us because the Government announcements don’t address their situation, or promised action hasn’t materialised. 

 

The two most frequent issues coming in to me have been; self-employed people for whom the Government announcements are no help, and constituents who are stuck abroad.

• There are probably over 10,000 self-employed people in this constituency. I supported the call for a temporary universal basic income for self-employed people.  I am glad the government introduced some support,  however I still have concerns about the details, and for those who are excluded from the various schemes. I have written to the Chancellor again about this.
• Many constituents are stuck abroad with dwindling supplies of money and medicines and no certainty as to how they will get home. We have helped and advised dozens of UK citizens trapped abroad and I am asking Foreign Office Ministers to urge the UK Government to do more.
• Other issues also coming in include; the cancelling of cancer treatment, evictions by frightened landlords, and the inability to get food and essential medicines to name a few. 

In trying to best help my constituents I have talked to Hounslow Councillors and senior officers, to the local hospital and community care trusts, those managing residential care homes, local business organisations, the foodbanks and many others.  I’ve been on on-line calls with Labour’s key front bench teams, ensuring they are aware of what’s happening here, and learning how they are successfully pushing the Government to go further and address problems that Ministers clearly hadn’t thought through.  Every day there is new information, and new challenges. 

 

Our ability to scrutinise Government has been undermined now we are in a long Parliamentary Recess.  That is why I have joined the call to get a form of Parliamentary scrutiny up and running as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I can use my role as a community representative to link need with support, publicise local information, and raise issues with the Government and local public services.  Please keep in touch!

 

I share the gratitude of all of us for those in essential services; not only in the NHS, but also those in the care, food, charity, delivery, utilities and transport sectors, and the emergency services.

We thank them all!

 

The loss of work, and access to normal health care and day-to-day needs will be devastating for many, and they will need the support of the rest of us in the days and weeks to come.  If you can volunteer, please do.  If you can spare money to hard-pressed charities – then please do that too.  Many vital charities may not survive the loss of income as normal charitable giving collapses.  And now there will be the exponential growth in demand for some such as foodbanks, advice and information services and domestic violence charities.  If you can – please give generously of your time or your money!!

CONTACTING ME AND MY TEAM

 

Please email me [email protected] or call 020 856 3646 or 020 7219 8590  between 10am - 2pm weekdays and we will do our very best to assist. Do leave a clear message if we cannot answer and also do include your full contact details (& any relevant reference numbers eg DWP. Home Office, and/or my ZA… reference if we’ve responded on the same issue with you before)

 

From the first week of March I have been challenging the Government on their response to the coronavirus crisis;

• On the need for more NHS clinical staff to be recruited urgently due to COVID-19
• Seeking assurances that staff in Community settings will be issued with PPE
• Challenging the Chancellor to temporarily increase Child Benefit; and lift the benefit cap and two child limit on Universal Credit
• Explaining to the Health Secretary that the script for 111 call-handlers was not updated for at least 3 hours after new Government announcements, exactly the time when people needed to know the detail behind any announced changes
• Urging the Health Secretary to ensure that women can access abortion services at home during lock-down, as recommended by reputable clinicians and as outlined in Government regulations that were rescinded within hours of being published. I am glad the Government finally retained their initial policy, so that the estimated 44,000 women who will need abortions over next 3 months will be able to obtain them without putting themselves or doctors at unnecessary risk

 

I am also glad that, following my question in the House on 11 February about an elderly Chinese woman who was visiting her family here, the Government subsequently extended the visas of non-UK citizens who cannot return to their home countries until the crisis is over

 

Not all of March in Parliament was taken up with the Coronavirus response.  On other topics (some of which now seem like a distant memory):

• I demanded that the Government fund the repair of Hammersmith Bridge
• I asked International Trade ministers for greater investment & support for high tech industry after we leave the EU
• I explained, in a debate on Post Offices, how we have no Post Office in Brentford and that the future of Chiswick’s counter appeared to be in doubt.  I called on greater joined-up work between Government and the Post Office to ensure there was reasonable coverage across our communities
• In a debate on political neutrality in schools, I urged the Government to include Climate Change in the school curriculum
• In the debate on the Budget, I demanded long term investment in public services including the NHS and Education- and to support the local services that address serious crime, as well as to ensure the dangerous cladding on flats was properly rectified.
• I co-sponsored a debate on the appalling Loan Charge; describing the impact it has had on constituents who are contractors, and called on Government to end the retrospective and punitive nature of the Loan Charge

I launched the all-party group on PANS/PANDAS; a devastating and frequently undiagnosed syndrome in children following an autoimmune reaction in the brain to an infection.  It causes, virtually overnight, severe anxiety, OCD, tics and a host of other neurological symptoms – when early diagnosis and simple antibiotics can address much of the illness before long-term damage sets in.

COMMUNITY UPDATE – (Before lock-down!)

Printed from an email sent my Ruth Cadbury MP