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At Health Questions on Tuesday 19 April 2022 I asked: “The Secretary of State will know that Walsall Manor has been merged with Royal Wolverhampton – they share the same Chief Executive and Chairman – without consultation with local people. How on earth can integration take place when Walsall Manor doesn’t have a full-time Chief Executive who can ensure that this happens? Could the Secretary of State please ensure that Walsall Manor get their own Chief Executive?” The joint Chair and CEO at Walsall and Wolverhampton came into post in early 2021. In June 2021 the McLean Review was established into poor and inappropriate behaviour by the interim CEO David Loughton, and complicity with, and a failure to address, this poor conduct by the Chair Steve Field. In September 2021, the Review upheld these complaints. David Loughton was appointed as an “Interim CEO”, but both he and the Chair remained in post despite the findings of the Review. Now, David Loughton has been appointed as permanent “Group CEO” at both Trusts.

The festival of Vaisakhi celebrates the establishment of Sikhism as a collective faith in 1699 by Guru Gobind Singh. This year, Vaisakhi was on 14 April.

I attended Mass at St Mary’s the Mount Church in St Matthews on Easter Sunday, 17 April 2022.

Nash Dom held an Easter Charity Event at the Palfrey Community Centre on Saturday 9 April 2022 to raise funds to support Ukrainian refugees. It was a wonderful event, featuring face painting, a cake stall, a bouncy castle and a disco for the children. There was also a stall which allowed visitors to sign “Hope for Ukraine” cards, and I signed one of the cards. I am delighted to hear that the event raised over £600. Congratulations to Nash Dom for all the work they have done to support refugees from Ukraine. 

On 4 April 2022, the Environmental Audit Committee published our Report “Greening imports, a UK carbon border approach”. Our Report recommends that the Government develop a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism within this decade to prevent efforts to decarbonise the UK being circumvented by companies moving their operations to countries with weak climate legislation. The summary of Recommendations of the Report are as follows: “An effective carbon price is a crucial lever to combat climate change, and requires an effective anti-carbon leakage approach to enable this; the Government’s current approach, principally the allocation of free emissions trading scheme (ETS) allowances, is insufficient to drive effective decarbonisation. The current situation also means that the UK applies a carbon price to domestic production but not to imports, which make up 43% of the UK’s consumption emissions. A policy response in the form of a UK carbon border approach is needed. This should include a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) to ensure an equivalent carbon price is applied to imports as is applied to domestic production, as part of a co-ordinated set of policies, including product standards. We recommend that the Government commence work on this UK carbon border approach immediately, to enable its implementation during the 2020s. The EU is currently developing plans for a CBAM, which it intends to have in place by 2023; it is important that the Government articulate how it intends to work with stakeholders on, and communicate progress towards, the actions it is taking to ensure no adverse impacts to the UK. While multilateral solutions remain the most effective way to address carbon leakage, the process to agree these is lengthy, so unilateral action is essential in the short-term.