Alison Bennett's Monday Mail: A Whirlwind Week
It’s been one of those weeks where events have come at me thick and fast. Here are a couple of things that have been up to.
Uniting for carer providers
A large demonstration outside Parliament took place on Tuesday about the Care sector. Whilst it was picked up by GB News (keep watching and you will see me in the footage), it wasn’t as widely covered as I would have liked it to be - world events are understandably dominating the airwaves at the moment.
‘Providers Unite’ is a grassroots coalition uniting community care and support providers across the UK. They want to safeguard the future of adult care services. The rally at Parliament was to protest against the impact of the Autumn Budget on social care. As the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Care and Carers, I was honoured to be asked to address the rally. You can watch a video of what I said here.
Russia and Defence - my questions to David Lammy and Keir Starmer
Immediately after the Carers’ Rally, it was into the Commons.
First to ask the Foreign Secretary David Lammy a question. For some time, the Liberal Democrats have been urging the government to seize billions of pounds worth of frozen Russian assets to help pay for supporting Ukraine. I was delighted that I secured a commitment from the Foreign Secretary to do so.
Each day in Parliament there is an opportunity for government ministers to come to the Commons to make a statement. Usually it is ministers making these statements. It’s not often that it is the Prime Minister coming to the Commons. Tuesday was different. A statement from Keir Starmer came straight after questions to the Foreign Office, so I stayed in the Chamber to listen.
The Prime Minister’s announced an increase to defence spending paid for by a cut to the overseas development aid budget. Increasing defence spending is something that I think is vital in a world that is feeling quite precarious right now. But I am concerned by two aspects of this:
- The speed with which the additional money will come forward. The Prime Minister said that the defence budget would not increase until 2027 - in two years time. Watch my question to the Prime Minister on this point.
- Cutting our budget for overseas development is a mistake. Overseas aid stabilises war torn countries, boost education and health care efforts and enables Britain to extend soft power across the world. When we cut back on this, our enemies fill the void. This drastic cut will in the longer term not serve our interests. Listen to our International Development Spokesperson Monica Harding be interviewed about this on LBC News.
If you are interested in exploring this in more detail, then Lib Dem Party Leader Ed Davey was on Pod Save the UK this week. A short clip is here, and the full episode is available here.
On the BBC
Thursday and Friday brought some appearances on the BBC.
Thursday - was in response to the Transport Secretary’s announcements about Gatwick Airport expansion, something that I have been opposed to for a number of years. Whilst I was pleased that Lib Dem MPs’ calls for more work to be done on noise mitigation were heeded, I remain opposed to expanding airport capacity when we are facing climate breakdown. I spoke to Radio5Live and BBC Sussex about this.
On Friday I went to Tunbridge Wells where BBC Politics South East is recorded (for broadcast on Sunday mornings). I was on the panel with Lord Craig MacKinley, the former Conservative MP who lost all four of his limbs having contracted sepsis. Whilst I strongly disagreed with some of the things he said on the programme, his fortitude in overcoming what has happened to him is something I hugely admire. Unfortunately due to an unusual technical error, the programme wasn’t broadcast yesterday morning. If it gets published on the iPlayer I will share it in a future Monday Mail.
Driving home
After the recording I met up with my colleague the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells Mike Martin, and knocked on a few doors as the sun was setting. It was a beautiful evening with the promise of spring around the corner.
Then I got in the car to come home and switched on the radio in the middle of the Zelensky-Trump broadcast from the Oval Office. My stomach lurched, and I could feel anxiety flooding through me. It felt like premeditated thuggery from Trump and Vance, and it sounded an awful lot like, for all the warm words with our Prime Minister and Emmanuel Macron, it is Putin who has their ear.
I close with a passage from the end of the Daniel Finkelstein book that I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, and finished reading this week. Finkelstein is arguing that unlike with the Nazis, there was never a reckoning of the crimes perpetrated by the Soviets on his father’s family and millions of others.
The silence over the Soviets' crimes had its consequences. There has never been a reckoning over what they did. They have never been forced to see what they did as shameful. It has allowed Vladimir Putin to write his own version of Russian and Ukrainian history, and that in turn has helped him justify, at least to himself, the latest war against the people of my father's city. Once more, the news tells of bombs falling on Lviv.
Getting in touch
My parliamentary email address is: alison.bennett.mp@parliament.uk. If you need my help, please get in touch.
Best wishes,
Alison
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