Category: My work

The company – Amazon is destroying millions of new and unused items every year which is hugely wasteful, and harms the environment by adding to the already massive problem of landfills.

Landfills are a big source of pollution. I was elected on a manifesto that recognised that “waste, including plastic waste, pollutes our land and seas, killing wildlife and contaminating our food”. It committed to “make producers responsible for their own waste and for the full cost of recycling or disposal, encouraging more sustainable design and manufacturing”.

We already have a world where over-production and over-consumerism is damaging our environment and ecology, and even where some of the contents of, say, electrical items are recycled, this still represents a waste of the original production cycle.

I have serious concerns also about unsafe, intense working conditions in Amazon workplaces, the second-by-second tracking of workers movements, the anti-union stance taken, and notably, Amazon’s use of tax havens which means they pay minimal levels of tax.

Cheap labour, low or no taxes, huge profits and not even the heart to let the hard-pressed workers have access to unwanted items paints a picture of a cold, money-making machine with no humanity. I have always supported unionisation including at all Amazon depots, notably working with the GMB in Sheffield, and supporting the Alabama warehouse campaign earlier this year.

The deliberate destruction of unopened or unused products by Amazon on an industrial scale demonstrates the need for changes to the law to ensure that companies are not able to pollute the environment in this way.

What would be the advantage to UK citizens if the Government was to make the proposed change resulting in an ‘international exhaustion regime’?

The answer is that there isn’t one other than a convenient and easy way out of the Government’s self-imposed problem with the Northern Ireland Protocol.  Maintaining a national exhaustion regime would unfortunately conflict with the Northern Ireland Protocol because of Brexit.

This is yet another example of the fallout from the botched Brexit deal that the Prime Minister concluded in order to force Brexit through in haste and desperation.  An election promise he is following through on!

And so, there is the appearance of opening a consultation for input from businesses – the Government has admitted that it has already entered into treaties that limit its options.  It has also said that a national regime would conflict with the Northern Ireland Protocol which guarantees the free flow of goods across the Irish (and therefore EU) / UK border in Northern Ireland – meaning they are more likely to go for an international regime as a default position.

It therefore seems that the best that could be hoped for is some kind of mixed regime where exemptions are made (medicines comes to mind), though I would guess that books may not figure very high in their list of priorities.

I very much empathise with authors about this worrying situation.  Certainly, authors and other holders of copyrights held in the UK are going to suffer.

You can be sure that I will do all I can to oppose the Government’s move to abandon support for authors in this way. 

I am opposed to vaccine passports just as I am opposed to mandatory vaccines.  I can see how vaccine passports can be a backdoor route to forcing people to take the vaccine.

At the same time, I want to see the maximum possible uptake of the vaccine.  Medical data shows that Covid vaccines reduce infection and transmission rates, improve infection outcomes, and reduce the risk of hospitalisation and deaths.

In April this year I signed a pledge that opposed the use of vaccine passports to determine who can go to certain events, or even who can enter pubs, which the Government clearly wanted to use as a justification for relaxing Covid restrictions.  I am still opposed to their use and voted against their use in Parliament.

The management of the Covid crisis has been a debacle from the start – this is not the end of the virus and it is not going to obey the Prime Minister’s decisions.  Everything should be done to encourage uptake of the vaccination including making the vaccine available to the Global South by waiving intellectual property rights.

I will continue do all I can to advocate in parliament, and beyond, for a fairer and more effective approach to the pandemic.

In relation to the Health and Care Bill, I have campaigned for years for more funding for the NHS.  I have also continuously opposed the creeping privatisation we have seen over recent years.  My urgent priority is to end NHS privatisation.

I have repeatedly called for a long-term investment plan for the NHS and social care sector, funded by increasing taxation on the very wealthiest in society.

In 2019 I stood on a manifesto pledging to end and reverse privatisation in the NHS, to repeal the Health and Social Care Act, to end the requirement on health authorities to put services out to competitive tender and to bring all services and subsidiary companies back in-house.

So, I have voted against and will continue to vote against the Health and Care Bill as it stands.  I will also continue to challenge Boris Johnson on his plans to sell off our NHS to the US which will raise drugs prices and allow American companies to sue the UK if they don’t get their way.

Our NHS is an institution that we all love and respect but it will not serve us well if it is not properly funded.

I have been a long-time campaigner on mental health issues and have long opposed the creeping privatisation and underfunding of our mental health and medical services provided through the NHS.

I am very concerned about the lack of support currently available and that many children don’t have access to services to get the mental health support they need.

What is very worrying is that the official English survey of child mental health has found that children in families who have fallen behind on bills payments are more than twice as likely to show signs of having a mental disorder.

Thus, the link between poverty and mental health is clear for everyone to see and is heart-breaking. Poverty and inequality have of course worsened during the Pandemic, 80% of young people have said that their mental health worsened during the covid-19 outbreak. The current emphasis on behaviour and discipline in schools, instead of promoting belonging and wellbeing, will only add fuel to the fire.

In England less than 10% of mental health funding goes to services for children and young people and a 2018 review of the NHS Five Year Forward View found that money intended for mental health had been used to plug funding gaps in the wider NHS.

I support calls for the Government to properly fund mental health services so that every child and young person who needs it can access professional support. I was elected on a manifesto that promised to radically improve the mental health support available to young people.

I will continue do all I can to advocate in parliament, and in wider campaigning, to secure a long-term funding settlement for children’s mental health services.