Back to Parliament this week after a pause for half term and constituency work and the business of keeping our laws are up-to-date. On Tuesday we passed the British Nationality Bill which retrospectively ensures that people born in this country in the past have the rights of citizenship extended to them. All sides accept that mistakes were made with the Windrush generation and it’s really important to spend time making sure the legislation is as it should be.
I was not able to attend Monday’s debate on the role of local Government in Net Zero because of a previous parliamentary meeting and while I think it is sensible to reduce the impact we each have on the environment we shouldn't deny the reality of the need for affordable energy and council tax and the need to make a tangible difference to emissions globally. Recent additions from China are, in one year, enough to mitigate our Net Zero policies for 50 years so investing in clean technologies we can sell around the world has to be better than adding to our energy bills every year with no meaningful results.
The work to improve access to NHS dentist appointments continues and there are some encouraging signs. Over the last year capacity nationwide has increased by 16% and it is of course frustrating that this has not been the case in all areas here. As well as keeping regular updates with the local NHS, I am setting up a meeting with the Chief Dental Officer for England - quite a daunting job title - to see what more we can do.
I hope people enjoyed World Cider Day on June 3rd. In Somerset of course every day is a day to promote our wonderful cider producers and what is important is that we keep making trade deals across the globe that give our brilliant local food and drink producers the best chance possible to succeed in new markets. On a related note the Royal Bath and West Show was a big success and well done to all those involved with the organisation.
Finally, there has been a lot in the papers this week about Artificial Intelligence and the risks and governance around it. There are huge opportunities in terms of healthcare and manufacturing but it will need to be very carefully thought through regulated not to become dystopian. The prospect of things like "deep fakes" making scams and disinformation more widespread is also very immediate and goes back to an increasingly familiar theme. We all need to question the reliability of sources and not be distracted by the ever growing amount of background noise and worse.