Sat at my desk in the House of Commons trying to catch up on hundreds of emails and letters, and prepping for next week which sees several major parliamentary bills including the first reading of the Energy Bill. Work today considerably helped by listening to the Test Match from Nagpur in India. Would be lying if I did not admit to wanting to be at the cricket, but genuinely adore this job. My apologies that some of your letters and emails have not been replied to as quick as I would like to. We reply to everything. I had to write to one constituent this week and apologise for the delay in the reply to his email but pointed out that we have been dealing with the
Allendale Middle School crisis and how it impacts on other schools in the area, 3 potential green belt planning applications, the whittonstall open cast application, a new job in the Home Office, and pretty big national matters like the EU Budget and Levesons report on press regulation amongst other things, all in the last 4 weeks. My hope is that I will speak in wednesdays energy debate although it is already oversubscribed. On Thursday I may be speaking further in the main chamber of the House of Commons on local Northumbrian issues, although separately there is the 3 hour Human Trafficking debate in westminster hall, which is part of the Home Office brief I have to help with, at the same time.
If I do get in to the Energy Bill debate I hope to debate
- whether the government should continue to subsidise companies to buy UK timber for biomass as it distorts the timber price for non subsidised timber purchasers
- the cumulative impact of energy sources on one area - whether this is wind or coal in one particular place
- future policy on renewables, in particular wind power
- the issue of regulation / improvement of the provision and price of heating oil and LPG
- our plans to combat fuel poverty
All this in under 10 minutes. The debate starts at around 1pm on Wednesday
