The Coming Election

Sport has an incredible ability to bring people of different backgrounds, abilities and opinions together to work towards a common goal and I have been hugely supportive of local sport while serving as your MP. I regularly attend local sporting events and it is clear that Wiltshire has both a proud sporting history and a bright sporting future, with participation in sport going up every year in Wiltshire since 2005. To take just one example, there are now over 900 football teams playing competitively across Wiltshire each week, which has created an astonishingly large social network of people who play together and then socialise together - all the while staying fit and healthy.

It is also increasingly clear that sport is not just good for our physical health, but also has a big part to play in how we tackle mental health issues such as depression. People who describe themselves as ‘very happy’ are three times as likely to be a member of a sports team or club. Mental health charity, Mind Wiltshire, told me when I met them some time ago that sport is now being prescribed by clinicians as a way of treating some mental health conditions as the physical and social aspects of sport can benefit those who are suffering. So I want to continue to support and encourage local sports clubs and groups by getting them the funding they need from central government in the next Parliament.

I believe in democracy - so it's crucial that we honour the referendum result.

It's time to #GetBrexitDone. I'm proud to be one of 635 Conservatives candidates standing up for democracy in Britain. Democracy only works when votes are enacted and the current paralysis is the worst case scenario meaning business can’t plan and won’t invest. We need to move forward, leave the EU with a deal and get back to focusing on education, the NHS, tackling crime, the environment and all the other pressing domestic issues.

We have a duty to make our country as clean and green as possible. Our Clean Air Strategy is rightly focusing on how we can cut air pollution and save lives through £3.5 billion worth of investment in better air quality and cleaner transport. In Bradford on Avon, the traffic continues to cause problems not only for congestion but also air pollution. I have managed to get Wiltshire Council to agree to model different potential solutions to help alleviate the traffic issue.

It is fantastic news that our air is now cleaner than at any point since the industrial revolution but we can and must go further to protect the health of our nation by investing in low carbon vehicles and funding local efforts to cut harmful pollution. The act of air pollution may be local but the effects can be national, even global, so we as a country have to take direct action to clean up our environment and secure the quality of the air we breathe for generations to come.

I am pleased to announce that this Government we will be planting a further 11 million trees by the end of the next Parliament and over 50 million over the next 25 years. It is essential we have ambitious policies to make our country as green and sustainable as possible and whilst we have made considerable progress already, there is much more to be done.

Trees have a fantastic capacity for carbon capture and can therefore help us in the fight against climate change, but they also play an essential part in the ecosystem to maintain our precious local habitats. We have to protect our unique and irreplaceable ancient woodlands but we should also be innovative and create more green spaces to ensure generations to come enjoy the same luscious environment which we can sometimes take for granted.

That is why we should welcome plans to create a “Northern Forest” along the M62 corridor because although it is not local to our constituency, climate change is an international issue and we have to work together to take on such a big challenge.