Mail Weekly Column: 16 January 2023
This was our first week back in Parliament after the Christmas break. It has been fantastic being able to spend so much time in Furness but I am glad to be back at the job of raising constituent’s concerns and making sure their voices are heard.
A significant task this week has been scrutinising the Online Safety Bill. I am backing amendments which will make the Directors of online platforms personally responsible for ensuring abusive and racist content (particularly child harm) and antisemitism are no longer shared through their channels. Their failure should, in our view, lead to criminal sanctions.
Another was a debate about independent lifeboat services. This gave me a welcome opportunity to praise our excellent lifeboat associations, both the Ulverston and the Duddon Inshore Rescue teams plus their partner organisations like the Bay Search and Rescue, the Furness Coastguard the RNLI and beyond. All are volunteers who deserve full credit for everything they do to keep people safe on sea, sand and land.
As a Member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, I am fortunate to be involved in a truly compelling report on drugs and drug policy. When you learn that 90% of acquisitive crime (ie theft) in the UK is linked to drug crime, it is clear that this affects everyone. We all understand the repercussions of individuals being caught in the cycle of drug-taking, on their health, their families and on the police. Even casual users fund the drug gangs who then feed perniciously off society.
In search of solutions, the Committee has been looking at how this issue is treated around the world. Each country does things differently. Some legalise and regulate drug-taking; others are stricter; and some treat the problem as medical rather than one linked to law enforcement. All of these approaches have positives, negatives and unintended consequences - there is no ‘silver bullet’. But it is fascinating to sit down with colleagues across all the main political parties to consider what actions we should recommend to Government. Our work is not yet over. We will share our findings as our thinking develops. In the meantime, I would love to hear your views.
On Tuesday I joined a cross-party group of MPs and Peers to discuss Russian kleptocrats, oligarchs and others who seek to hide assets in the UK, using every available method to keep the courts, investigators, media and others at bay. In a few weeks’ time the Economic Crime Bill will make its way through Parliament. Across Government, we are working closely with experts to make it harder for those benefiting from Putin’s corrupt regime, and to make it easier to seize their assets to use them to help rebuild Ukraine.
It is all too easy to get ‘war fatigue’ when war goes on longer than headlines sometimes make clear. We must not. It is important to remember that battles aren’t just fought with tanks. We also need to stop aggressors and ensure that they cannot fund their battles. I hope that the Bill can be amended to achieve this.
