It was lovely to visit the Lytham St Annes Islamic Society at their Community Centre at weekend. The society extended a very warm welcome to a lot pf people as it opened its doors to guests and gave tours of the premises.
While this is the society’s first permanent premises in the area, its members have been working with a number of local charities including Age UK and Fylde Foodbank since 2015, making a real difference in our community.
This week I am hosting a tour of Westinghouse’s Springfields site for MPs so they can see the huge importance of this site to our energy infrastructure in the UK.
Springfields is our only nuclear fuel manufacturing site in the UK; it is vital that we maintain the capability to manufacture our own fuel, for our new generation of power stations – no matter who is building them.
We have an incredible skilled workforce at Springfields and we must maintain it. Losing those skills in future would mean we are forced to rely on other nations to make our fuel, and that damages our energy security.
I will be stressing these points to my colleagues ahead of the debate I have arranged in Parliament in the next few weeks, and ahead of a further tour of the facility for MPs unable to make the first date.
The situation in Afghanistan is incredibly serious and distressing and a humanitarian disaster.
The speed at which the Taliban have retaken the country following the withdrawal of American troops is astonishing.
For 20 years we worked to rebuild the Government and train up its own security forces; both appeared non-existent as the Taliban tore through the country. It is heart-breaking to see what is happening and the international community must now come together to look at what the next steps are.