Column 20 May 2021 - The Queen's Speech

Last week saw Parliament return to sitting following the State Opening of Parliament and the Queen’s Speech. The Queen’s Speech sets the Government’s priorities for a new session of Parliament. As the Queen said in her speech:

“My Government’s priority is to deliver a national recovery from the pandemic that makes the United Kingdom stronger, healthier and more prosperous than before.”

The Government is doing this by continuing with its levelling up agenda across the UK.

With Truro and Penwith College such an important educational centre in our constituency , I was pleased to see the speech contain legislation that will support a lifetime skills guarantee to enable flexible access to high quality education and training throughout people’s lives, via the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. It is really good news that Further Education is being highlighted in this way, and I look forward to seeing what this means for Further Education across Cornwall.

Part of this agenda is about improving all forms of national infrastructure, and I was pleased to see the Product Security and Telecommunications Bill coming forward, which will extend and strengthen mobile coverage as well as gigabit capable broadband, aspects of communication which have never been so important to us to have working reliably, as so many of us have learned while working from home!

Now we have left the EU there is also more work to do to ensure our animal welfare laws remain of the highest standard, better in fact than those in the EU, and I was pleased to see legislation will coming forward in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, Kept Animals Bill and Animals Abroad Bill that will allow the UK  to continue to do just this.

I was also pleased to see several important Bills that we have been working on for some time carried over into the new Parliament, including the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, Armed Forces Bill, and Environment Bill , among others being continued. These are significant pieces of legislation and it is only right that Parliament is given the time to debate them properly so that they can be of greatest benefit to our country.

In particular, regarding the Environment Bill, I was delighted to see last week, formal confirmation that principles from the Sewage (Inland Waters) Bill, a Private Members Bill which I was an original signatory for, will be added to this Bill for consideration in Parliament later this year.

As a passionate campaigner for our environment it is clear that we must take more action to combat the discharges into our seas and watercourses that we still sadly see far too often from some of the antiquated water infrastructure in Cornwall, even as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

These amendments place duties on the Government to implement a plan to reduce sewage discharges from storm overflows, and report back to Parliament on it, as well as a duty on water companies to accurately report the incidents that take place under their watch. Combined with the Storm Overflows Taskforce this will lead to a greater understanding of the scale of this problem and in turn allow us to reduce and eliminate it, improving our aquatic environments for all!

As ever, if you need my assistance with anything then my team and I are here to help. Please get in touch with me by email at Cherilyn.mackrory.mp@parliament.uk , or by telephone on 01872 229698.