This is always a great time of year as our lush green landscape glistens in the sun and for 2023 we also have the Coronation celebrations. I hope they will bring lots of happiness as we get to spend a little more time with family and friends. We will remember the Queen and her incredible length of public duty, work for charities and building relationships across the world. She also had a great sense of humour. She will never be replaced but Charles is a thoughtful man and his views on architecture and the importance of design are I think particularly relevant today.
I also hope we might have a pause from the endless negativity that much of the media has about our country. Of course we have had some challenges but so have others across the world. Good news is rarely reported. For example since 2010 we have cut C02 emissions by nearly 40% - the best of any G7 country such as Germany, France and the USA. And we are executing on exciting and valuable new trade arrangements including the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Australia, Canada, Japan and others.
Access to healthcare is a top priority for me in Somerset and one of the ways I think we can do better is to invest more in local pharmacies. I am visiting some in the area to discuss how we can make that happen to sustain these well loved facilities and take some pressure off GPs and A&E. Pharmacists are key community members in many places and I will do all I can to support them. If you have any views on pharmacies please do let me know.
I am looking forward to my other plans this week including a visit to Avishayes Primary School in Chard. I always enjoy school visits and the insightful and direct questions from the children are good fun. I will also catch up with neighbouring MP Chris Loder to discuss issues locally. MPs’ constituency boundaries don't always mean separate communities and ours mean cross community working with Devon and Dorset as well as with the rest of Somerset.
Finally it’s great to see plans are progressing to tackle fraud and cold-calling. It’s a particularly unpleasant crime, often targeting the vulnerable or older people. The Government plans to ban all unsolicited phone calls trying to sell financial products as well as setting up a National Fraud Squad. I have tried to help several constituents who have been the victims of fraud but the existing Action Fraud service simply hasn’t had the resource to cope with what is a growing problem as technology evolves. We are recruiting more police officers and getting tougher on anti-social behaviour and it is good news that more specialist police resource will be available to address crime such as this.