Hitting the ground running, Crawley Observer Column, Wednesday 18th July 2024

My thanks to all those who have been in touch since the election offering their best wishes and my apologies to those I’ve not been able to respond to so far. Becoming an MP is a surreal experience, frankly it only began to feel real when I took the oath of allegiance.

Sleeping four hours a night to keep on top of campaign tasks becomes sleeping four hours a night to keep on top of the new workload. At the heart of this is the fact every MP essentially operates a small business tasked with serving that community, with a staffing budget sufficient for four full-time roles to match the workload.

Unfortunately, every new MP starts from scratch. We have no parliamentary offices, that won’t change until September. We have no constituency offices, I have to find and kit-out appropriate facilities in Crawley. Most importantly, we have no staff and even when they have been recruited, appointments are subject to weeks’ of security vetting.

All of which is to say, I’m working as hard as I can to get an office up-and-running on-top of the day-to-day duties of an MP, but it’s going to take time to get a regular service in place for responding to correspondence.

Throughout the election, residents have raised a great range of issues with me—many of them urgent, from local concerns around housing developments to international matters, such as Gaza. I want to make it clear that despite the time pressures, from the day I gained access to my parliamentary email account, I have been actively pursuing solutions to these issues through engaging with ministers, public bodies, and other organisations.

This week Labour starts to set out how we will deliver upon our manifesto through the King’s Speech. It’s clear from cancelling constituency days and shortening recess that the new Government is determined to hit the ground running, getting Britain going again as quickly as possible. For those of us in Westminster it’s going to be an intense few months, but I’m proud to belong to a party determined to deliver for the country.