News

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.

On 31 March I had the pleasure of welcoming students from Joseph Leckie Academy to Parliament, along with Principal James Ludlow and Assistant Principal Joe Greaves. The students were given on a tour of Parliament to learn about its history and procedures. They were taken through Westminster Hall, through Central Lobby, and arrived at the Lords just in time to see a vote. The students were then able to watch the debate ahead of the Easter adjournment in the Commons, and when this concluded, to go down into the Chamber.