The Mail Column: 25 July 2020
I began this week in a small building in London's West End. Fresh off the train from Ulverston to Euston, I slipped on my facemask, took the Tube with steamed up glasses to Oxford Street and walked to the local blood donation centre to give plasma to support the production of vaccines and treatments for Coronavirus.
It took about 40 minutes in total to give enough and was entirely painless. As I sat in the chair, hooked up to machine that extracts plasma and returns your blood to you, a nurse came up to me and with a nod told me that the Health Secretary had donated in the exact same spot. She then told me that they'd wiped the seat down afterwards. I smiled under my mask.
If you think you've had COVID then why not reach out to the NHS and see if your brush with the virus might help save lives in the future? Visit www.nhsbt.nhs.uk to learn more.
On the subject of COVID, I was reassured by the PHE report into the apparent 'high' rate of Coronavirus in Barrow. Remember the headlines from only a month or so ago about Barrow being a ‘pariah town’ and the COVID hotspot of the UK? Thankfully, all proven wrong.
The report confirms what the Health Secretary, and the Director of Public Health for Cumbria believed at the time, that our ‘high’ rates were due to a high rate of testing - essentially, we asked the question very many times, and so we got a lot of answers back. This didn’t mean that we had a high Coronavirus rate, but rather that we understood better what was happening in our local area.
Around the world this approach has been proven to save lives – so I take my hat off to University Hospitals Morecambe Bay Trust for going above and beyond with their approach to testing.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we can relax – the virus is still present and, as we’ve seen in places like Leicester, we need to act responsibly - wear facemasks when out and about, socially distance and wash hands - to make sure that we don’t see local outbreaks anywhere in Barrow & Furness.
Running slightly late, I got back on the Tube to the House of Commons, thoroughly disinfected myself, and walked over to a meeting with the Transport Secretary to discuss delivering on some of the priorities we've been campaigning for locally, not least improving our road and cycling infrastructure. The Transport Secretary has agreed to visit Cumbria to see some of our issues, and hear our ideas, first hand.
Later that day, I met with the Minister for Transport to discuss cycling specifically. This was to follow up on the question I asked in Parliament the week before. He has agreed to host a meeting with our councils, Highways England and Network Rail to agree a plan and get us working well together. I have about a dozen constituents who want to share their ideas on cycling and once we've met with the Minister, I intend to convene a cycling workshop to get all the ideas in one place.
As we recover from Coronavirus, I am keen to start addressing some of the most difficult issues we have in Furness. At a meeting with Cath from DropZone in Barrow this week we spoke about the challenges which young people in the area face and how early intervention is key to supporting them. This is true with education as much as it is with health. I want the government to be dealing with problems early on, rather than once they become deep set and nigh-on impossible to shift. It's an argument that many of us in 'red wall' seats are taking to the Prime Minister in our meetings with him and senior Cabinet Ministers and its one we intend to win.
The week ended with a series of surgery appointments and a Town Deal Board. The plans (which you can see on the Brilliant Barrow website) which the team has worked up will be transformational for Barrow and the surrounding area. I'm very excited about our town's future.
