“The argument for some form of offshore network system has been won.”
Success! Great to hear the Energy Minister, the Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng MP, formally confirm the Government’s support for the Offshore Ring Main campaign that Duncan Baker MP, Jerome Mayhew MP, James Cartlidge MP, the Rt Hon Thérѐse Coffey MP and I have been leading these past few years.
Speaking at the Adjournment Debate that our campaign group secured last Thursday, the Energy Minister’s comments represent a huge boost for our efforts – and the efforts of so many in our part of the world.
To learn more about the campaign, please read below.
To hear the Minister’s comments, please watch the clip below.
The coronavirus crisis has shown Norfolk’s traditional sense of community and neighbourliness is alive and well.
We will need that spirit again in these next few winter months.
That’s why I am delighted to be supporting the EDP and Norfolk County Council’s relaunch of their ‘Here to Help’ campaign.
Back in the spring, the campaign helped encourage dozens of people to help their community through the tough lockdown to come and I welcome the decision to re-energise it now as we enter the winter period.
To learn more about the campaign, please see the EDP article here
A moment the whole nation stops to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend our freedoms. Commemorating the fallen is a commitment to a better future.
It’s always an honour to lay a wreath of behalf of the people of Mid Norfolk.
Yesterday, the streets may not have been lined with people. But we will always remember.
We are so lucky to have the Mid Norfolk Railway here in our part of Nelson’s County. It is a real tourist asset and a source of joy for so many.
This year, Covid-19 and lockdown has been a major challenge for the MNR – and I valued the opportunity to catch up over Zoom back in the summer to learn more about the challenges they were facing, and subsequently feed in their views to Ministers and officials.
That’s why I was delighted to hear the recent news that the Railway is to receive a £190,000 grant from the Government’s £1.57bn Culture Recovery Fund. Administered by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Culture Recovery Fund looks to provide heritage assets with support to help them get through these incredibly difficult times.
The MNR will use over half of their share to fully restore a Mark 1 Corridor Coach. This is a crucial piece of work – seeing the coach join other coaches that the railway has recently restored and, as result, allow the Railway to run trains long enough to comply with Covid-19 social distancing regulations when lockdown ends again. The extra coach will also mean that the Railway can remain economically viable when open.
The rest of money will then be used to hire specialist machinery to allow some essential track maintenance work to be carried out in a way that ensures the railway’s staff and volunteers will be able to socially distance. Some IT equipment will also be purchased so that staff can continue to drive the Railway’s progress forward while working from home.
I am looking forward to visiting the MNR again when it is safe to do so.
We can’t have our local NHS overwhelmed by Covid: why I’ll support the PM on a November Covid circuit break. The decision to impose another lockdown is not one to be taken lightly. I deeply share constituents concerns about the enormous social and economic damage of another lockdown: locally and nationally. Having sat down with Norfolk health leaders yesterday and studied the data in detail, it’s now clear though that this disease is on an autumn surge which threatens to overwhelm our NHS at its busiest time of the year, when it is also clearing a backlog of patients and operations from this spring. If we don’t act we risk the NHS being overwhelmed (sometime in December) and a massively damaging later and longer lockdown with all the economic and social misery that means.
(By 8th November, the number of patients in East of England beds with Covid is expected to exceed the number in beds at the start of the March 2020 lockdown. Of course, the situation is worsened by the additional increase in hospital admissions that typically occurs during the winter period. In Norfolk, the number of patients in hospital with Covid roughly doubled last week in comparison to the week before. Full details will be released by the NHS in the coming days)
We HAVE to act. So, after reviewing local data, I’ll vote for the 4 week circuit-breaker today.
BUT. With some important provisos to ensure that the cure isn’t worse than the disease:
· There is proper support for the freelance/self-employed
· There is a proper review on December 2 with another democratic vote
· Norfolk returns ASAP to LOCAL control
· With a clear framework for BALANCING the cost of Covid with the cost of lockdown
As you may have seen in the local media (my interview on BBC Radio Norfolk Breakfast today can be found: here), I have made clear that the Government MUST ensure a balance between the hardships caused by the disease and those caused by bankruptcy and economic hardship.
The best way to do that is by LOCAL LEADERSHIP: our local Norfolk Councils, NHS, public health and social care workers did an outstanding job this spring protecting the most vulnerable. No one is better equipped to make these difficult decisions than our local agencies and elected local councillors, accountable to local residents.
In the end there are no easy decisions. But we must get the balance right. Rest assured I will continue to speak for our area and work flat out to make sure your concerns are raised and heard at the highest levels and that Ministers make the commitments we need. To see the latest and most up to date Covid-19 guidelines and information, please visit the Government website page below: Government Guidance – New National Restrictions from 5 November: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-national-restrictions-from-5-november
As many constituents, businesses and local Parish Councils have contacted me about in recent weeks, the Government has recently held two important consultations – the ‘Changes to the Current Planning System’ and ‘Planning for the Future’ consultations.
Please see both of my submissions below.
Whilst the reforms proposed contain some good measures (primarily on design codes and trees, and the desire to look at speeding up the entire planning process as a whole), I fear the proposals in general are undeliverable and will in fact worsen the situation – failing to address the real problems with our current planning system and instead creating a host of new issues.
As you can see, in each submission, I have outlined in detail the problems I see with the proposals being put forward by the Government and, in my ‘Planning for the Future’ consultation submission, I have set out how I believe the current planning system should in fact be improved.
Rest assured, as I have done with planning matters throughout my time as the MP for Mid Norfolk, I will continue to actively campaign on this matter – and fully intend continuing to speak in the House and lobbying Ministers hard to get the right outcome for our area.
As ever, any and all feedback is appreciated.
It is no secret that I have deep concerns about the high number of applications in our part of Norfolk – many of which are, often, highly inappropriate and on a scale that is unsustainable and out of keeping with the heritage and identity of our largely rural area, lacking the services and infrastructure needed to support them and the existing community, as well as clearly breaching the sustainable development criteria set out in the National Planning Policy Framework and 2011 Localism Act.
That’s why I have once again spoken out about my concerns regarding the Hopkins Homes application for 255 homes on land off Yaxham Road/Dumpling Green in Dereham – which is now going to be heard by the Planning Inspectorate after Hopkins Homes appealed against Breckland Planning Committee’s previous refusal of the development.
To read my submission in full, please do view it below.
Finally, after a long wait and our small, Covid compliant wedding in the summer, my new wife Fiona and I are moving into our new Mid Norfolk home.
Background.
When I was elected MP back in 2010, my then wife and I, with our then young children, lived in South West Norfolk near Swaffham.
As an MP you have to be in Parliament Monday to Thursday evening. To minimise cost to the taxpayer I didn’t use the MP Accommodation Allowance to rent a 2nd “home”, but instead rented a spare room from a friend for the nights I had to be in London. The weekly commute and inevitable juggling of living out of suitcases in two places (driving to London on a Monday morning to work in Parliament and returning on Thursday evening/Friday morning for Constituency Friday surgeries and weekends) took its toll and led to the eventual and very sad collapse of my marriage and subsequent divorce in 2017.
Since then, I have been living in London in the week and lodging in Litcham for constituency work, but now that I am remarried, my wife Fiona and I are making a home back in Mid Norfolk for us to live in when I’m not in Westminster.
It is a joy to be back in the Norfolk countryside (albeit with only two wooden chairs, a wood burning stove and a kettle for the time being!) We will be moving the rest of our stuff into our new home this week so that this lockdown we’ll be locked down here in Norfolk to handle ongoing constituency and parliamentary work remotely.
All correspondence will be handled in the usual way by myself and Elliot and Tom in the local constituency office - details below.
George Freeman MP
Member of Parliament for Mid Norfolk
8 Damgate Street
Wymondham
Norfolk
NR18 0BQ
Email: george.freeman.mp@parliament.uk
Tel: 01953 600 617
Twitter: @GeorgeFreemanMP
Facebook: @GeorgeFreemanMidNorfolk
Website: www.georgefreeman
LOCAL COVID UPDATE
29th October 2020
The Cranswick pork plant in Watton, #MidNorfolk produces 20% of the country’s pork. It is thus a major part of our national food chain.
Ministers at DEFRA and DHSC have decided that the plant should be kept open with a skeleton staff who have tested negative.
Ministers have decided & said today that with 15% testing they want to keep the vital Cranswick pork plant in Watton open, with a skeleton staff of those who have tested negative.
Thank you to Breckland Council and Norfolk County Council for moving so fast on local public health & track+trace.
To see the latest EDP article (30 October), please click here
To see my interview on BBC Look East (29 October), click here
To hear my BBC Radio Norfolk interview (30 October), click here
CRANSWICK FOODS
27th October 2020
Another Covid outbreak has occurred in the Mid Norfolk food processing sector – this time at Cranswick Foods in Watton.
(Exactly as I feared and warned was likely to happen during the Banham Poultry outbreak back I in the summer because of:
- Slow centralised response of NHS Track and Trace of staff after that Banham Poultry outbreak
- Lack of staff furlough support
- Lack of culling compensation for affected companies)
That’s why I am working closely with Breckland Council, Norfolk County Council and Public Health Norfolk’s Gold Command Taskforce to ensure this time that LOCAL agencies are allowed to run the operation in order to:
- Move FAST to isolate the disease and Track and Trace staff who need to isolate
- Help avoid lockdown of Watton
- Get the Cranswick Foods plant back up and running as safely and as fast as possible
We cannot have another unnecessarily long and damaging shutdown – as we had at Banham Poultry in Attleborough.
Rest assured, I am working tirelessly on this issue and will provide further updates soon.
To read my letter to the Secretary of States at DHSC and DEFRA, please click here.