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Dear John,
Thank you for reading my newsletter.
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Thank you to everyone who voted Welsh Labour on May 5th. In Cardiff Central we won two Council seats from the Lib Dems and all our Cardiff Central councillors standing for re-election were re-elected. A fantastic result.
To all our candidates - both successful and unsuccessful - thank you. It takes guts to stand for election and being a candidate and a Councillor involves a lot of hard work. Our whole Cardiff Central Labour team continues its work today serving and supporting our community.
It was also an excellent set of results Wales-wide; there is now not a single Tory majority Council in the whole of Wales.
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Boris Johnson's Law Breaking and Lying
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Last Wednesday, Sue Gray’s report was finally published. We knew there had been widespread law breaking in Downing Street but the detailed evidence in the report was absolutely shocking. Instead of accepting responsibility and resigning, Boris Johnson blamed everyone else, said we all needed to “move on” and insulted the public yet again.
It is abundantly clear that the Prime Minister has deliberately lied to Parliament and the public. During the lockdowns whilst he and his ministers held daily press conferences instructing us all to follow the covid laws, he was involved in repeated law breaking and despite his protestations, he knew what he was doing.
As we all know, the covid laws were put in place to protect us, our NHS and to save lives. Over 170,000 families are still grieving. He is telling them and all of us to “move on.”
Despite what Johnson and the majority of Tory MPs think – honesty, integrity, openness, accountability and responsibility in public life matters, and the public has the right to expect and demand that from the Prime Minister and all politicians.
And in the middle of the cost-of-living crisis, the Prime Minister and the government is more focussed on saving his job rather than tackling the problems the country is facing. You deserve better. Tory MPs need to show their constituents some respect. They are the only people who can remove him. They should throw him out.
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The cost-of-living crisis is getting worse. Inflation is at a record high of 9% and expected to increase further. By October, the typical household in Wales will be paying £1500 more this year on energy bills. We have the highest tax levels for 70 years with 15 tax rises alone since Rishi Sunak became Chancellor, with National Insurance contributions hiked last month. Under the Tory/Lib Dem coalition and subsequent Tory governments we’ve had 12 years of low growth and high tax.
In this Queen’s Speech, we needed to see urgent action on the economy and cost-of-living - a windfall tax on oil and gas giants, the National Insurance rise reversed and investment in climate friendly commitments to drive our transition to net zero.
That’s why Labour called for an Emergency Budget, and why for the past 5 months we have called for a one-off windfall tax on oil and gas producer profits. The National Insurance rise needs to be reversed and climate friendly investment is urgently required to drive our transition to net zero. The country needs Labour’s plan to grow our economy, as the Tory Government takes us into a new period of stagflation. If the Tories had matched Labour’s record on growth in Government, we could have spent £50 billion more on public services without having to raise a single tax.
In the debate on the Queen’s Speech, we forced a vote on an Emergency Budget, but every single Tory MP voted against it. We also forced a vote on introducing a windfall tax which Tory MPs voted against, only to see the Chancellor finally u-turn just a few days later, conceding we were right and introducing it. Whilst he dithered and delayed, £53million was added to our bills every single day of that 5 month delay.
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The Tories have promised 20 times that they will introduce an Employment Bill that will boost workers’ rights, but again there was no mention of it in the legislation programme in the Queen’s Speech.
This is yet another broken promise. A betrayal of working people, the same people the government has just hit with a tax rise. A Labour Government will write our New Deal for Workers into law within the first 100 days - ending zero hours contracts and fire and rehire, introducing employment rights from day one of employment and fair pay agreements to drive up pay and conditions.
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As if the police fine and the Sue Gray report wasn’t bad enough, Boris Johnson, ahead of the parliamentary investigation into whether he broke the Ministerial Code, has now changed it, ending the long-standing principle that breaking it should be an automatic resigning offence. He has also refused to introduce the Committee on Standards in Public Life recommendation that resignation should follow the “most serious breaches”, setting a dangerous precedent in which Ministers who commit offences such as bullying, sexual assault or bribery would not automatically have to resign. Labour will force Tory MPs to decide whether to back the Government’s attempts to water down parliamentary standards.
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I was back at the Despatch Box last Wednesday for Wales Questions, right before PMQs and the Prime Minister’s statement on the Sue Gray report.
I asked the Secretary of State for Wales what his plan was for tackling the cost-of-living crisis facing Welsh households, pushing the government to introduce the windfall tax and to tell us what the Chancellor’s plan was.
The following day, the Chancellor u-turned and introduced the windfall tax.
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A fantastic step from our Welsh Labour Welsh Government last week - they've just launched a national music service and trebled funding to the tune of £13.5 million.
Every child should have the opportunity to benefit from music education - regardless of their background.
Support will be available for children and young people to access and progress with music tuition, with learners from disadvantaged and under-represented groups supported to join music ensembles. - and a new national instrument and equipment library will be established to support access to a resource bank across Wales.
You can find out more about the National Plan for Music Education here:
https://gov.wales/national-plan-music-education?fbclid=IwAR0xuIz_PJIx0m-jEBzlfPalcC6eg6kdks76pUgRgWXxXGbEzANacuzoDoA
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It was brilliant this month to finally see the newly renovated Gelligaer Street Park in Cathays open. This follows a long-running campaign from local ward Councillors Ali Ahmed, Norma Mackie, Sarah Merry and Chris Weaver. The new park features brand new play equipment, seating, a natural play area, meadow and wildflowers.
A lovely new open space for families in Cathays all ready for summer!
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I know many constituents here in Cardiff Central are facing unacceptable delays applying for or renewing their passport.
Passport Office staff are working as hard as they can to turn around the record number of passport applications, but if you applied for your passport more than 10 weeks ago, need a passport urgently for compassionate travel reasons or you’re travelling in the next two weeks please get in touch with my office and we will try to help you.
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I took part in the Big Plastic Count last week, joining thousands of others across the UK in submitting our results and helping to form an action plan on what needs to happen next to tackle plastic pollution.
The Big Plastic Count is a joint initiative by organisations Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic, where participants count up every single piece of plastic they use in a week.
My tally for the week is in the picture above. I try very hard to recycle as much as I can and to limit buying single use plastic packaged products, but sometimes it seems unavoidable - contact lenses packets for example. Despite this, I’m still staggered at how much plastic I used up in a single week.
All the details are here: https://thebigplasticcount.com/
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I participated in Dementia Awareness Week - to learn more about the condition and the work going into helping those living with it.
It’s estimated that over 850,000 people in the UK are living with dementia.
Whilst the outlook for dementia sufferers, present and future, is challenging there is light at the end of the tunnel - pioneering new treatments, and research are moving along at pace - including the pioneering work being done at Cardiff University's Dementia Research Institute where I visited recently to hear directly from Prof Julie Williams.
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This week is Commonwealth War Graves Week - run by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Some of you may not know that here in Cardiff Central, we have two Commonwealth War Grave locations - one in Cathays Cemetery and another in the Cardiff Jewish Cemetery in Cyncoed.
Many of those who fought and died in the two world wars came from, and are commemorated in Cardiff Central, in cemeteries or named on memorials built and maintained by the CWGC.
War Graves Week is a great opportunity to learn more about them; their stories, who they were and where they came from.
You can look through records, or try the CWGC app here: https://www.cwgc.org/our-war-graves-your-history/war-graves-week/
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It was a real pleasure to catch up with Prof Michael Edmunds from Cyncoed at an event to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Royal Astronomical Society in Parliament. Mike has been elected President of the Society during its bicentenary celebration, and a packed event heard from Mike celebrating the best of their sciences, where the UK is a world leader.
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We had the good news this month that 100 new trees are to be planted in Bute Park creating a new community orchard, replacing 50 trees damaged by vandals last year.
This is all thanks to a community fundraising effort. I was really pleased to be able to help my constituent and well-known local business owner, Melissa Boothman at Secret Garden Café, make her great idea a reality. Melissa organised and raised over £5000 to make the orchard happen. Thank you to everyone who donated, to our Cathays Labour Councillors and Cardiff Council’s Parks department for assisting.
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Last week I met with Melanoma Focus
in Parliament, at an event hosted by my Labour colleague Chris Bryant MP to learn more about, and help to raise awareness of melanoma skin cancer.
Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, accounting for 1% of all cancer deaths and killing 2,300 people in the UK per year.
Chris became a Patron of the charity following his diagnosis with stage 3 melanoma skin cancer in 2019.
Melanoma skin cancer is becoming more common in the UK with around 16,700 new cases every year (46 every day). Since the early 1990s incidence rates have more than doubled and in males, they have almost tripled. It is expected to continue to rise.
You can read more about the event here:
https://www.jostevens.co.uk/2022/05/27/supporting-the-melanoma-focus-awareness-campaign-in-parliament/
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As my constituency office is now fully back open following the end of COVID-19 restrictions, we're operating on an appointment basis.
If you need help with an issue, please contact 02921 329736 or email me at [email protected] for an appointment.
You can also make an appointment to see me at one of my advice surgeries - details of these can be found on my website here:
https://www.jostevens.co.uk/get-help/surgeries/
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