Recently, I received an email from a constituent who invited me to an International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) event next week on Tuesday. Unfortunately, due to prior parliamentary commitments, I will be unable to attend the event.
I submitted the following question to the Home Office asking for details of Government plans to stop the spread of extremist material through social media:
"To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans her Department has to introduce legislation on technology companies preventing the publication of extremist material."
I received the following response from Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP - the Home Office Minister responsible for security:
I submitted the following question to the Ministry of Justice asking for details of the number of individuals convicted of terror-related offences due for release from UK prisons:
"To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners in UK jails were convicted of offences under the Terrorism Act 2000; and how many of those prisoners may be scheduled for release in the next (a) six months, (b) year, (c) three years and (d) five years."
The £1 billion deal Theresa May has struck with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is leaving the West Midlands massively short-changed. I asked the House of Commons Library to dig into the figures and our analysis shows Northern Ireland will get £244 per head compared to £13 in the West Midlands – that’s more than 18 times as much funding.
I recently received several emails from constituents about the Israel and Palestine debate on Wednesday 5 July. Unfortunately, due to other parliamentary commitments, I was unable to attend the debate.
Many argue that today's rise in extremism can be traced back to two overlapping crisis; a crisis of ideology, and a crisis of identity. This research programme which I help advise with Shabana Mahmood MP sets out to explore questions of identity, in our own home city of Birmingham. It's a three year programme which we hope will develop new answers to the challenge of developing what you might call a very English Islam.
For those who take an interest in such things, here's the original report I oversaw at the Treasury back in 2009-10, which uncovered the problem we now know as the 'squeezed middle'
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Many constituents have written to me about the Grenfell fire. Most enquiries focused on fire-safety standards, the weakness of the Government's response and the need to properly assist the victims of the fire in finding new housing and professional support in overcoming the tragedy that has befallen their community.
I have prepared the following response:
A simple truth is now clear in economics.
Policymakers and politicians know how to globalise, but we do not know how to make globalisation work for the majority of voters. And today we see the consequences of this in referenda and elections around the world. Inequality in advanced countries is fuelling huge political instability.