Labour Party Conference
Welcome to my first ever blog! It forms part of my newly redesigned website. I thought a blog would be a good way to keep you up to date with my work and activity in Westminster and Huddersfield. I hope it will give you an insight into the kind of work I do and let you know the issues and campaigns I have been working on recently.
I thought I’d start with my thoughts on this year’s Labour Party Conference. This conference was as busy as ever. I always attend a lot of fringe meetings, either to speak or to listen to debates on a range of different issues. This year I gave speeches at seven or eight fringe events.
We made the mistake of agreeing to breakfast meetings on the Monday morning – it involved getting up before dawn and walking through what seemed like a typhoon towards the conference centre, I arrived at the meeting very wet indeed!
This was an interesting conference for me as I covered a wide spectrum of issues, focused on the broader remit encompassed by the new Department of Children, Schools and Family. I spoke at a breakfast meeting on protecting children from violence, a lunchtime meeting on skills in the energy sector and finally an evening meeting regarding the efficiency of personal carbon trading, organised by IPPR.
The next day my meetings ranged from funding for higher education, to how to prevent deaths on the road and improve road safety and finally, how to support and help people with mental health issues get back into employment and training.
We had a very rich and diverse range of debates which I like because it kept our interest maintained and sharing ideas and opinions is always productive. That was the fun of the whole experience. And of course in addition to this I was dipping in and out of the conference hall to hear different speeches by ministers and delegates.
Conference has changed in recent years; there is often more activity and more intellectual ferment on the fringe than in the main hall! But that is the way all political conferences have gone in my view. All in all it was an exciting and motivating party conference.
