Last week, in my role as the new Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, I met with the Disability Charities Consortium. It’s key to hear about the important work they do and their insights and priorities on how the Government can work together with fantastic organisations to make a big difference to disabled peoples’ daily lives, supporting their needs and aspirations.
I’m so pleased to welcome the new Women's Health Priorities for 2024- a key announcement for women of all ages with a focus on problem periods, women's health research, menopause impact and improved support for domestic and sexual abuse victims. These further priorities were developed from responses to the Government’s call for evidence from over 100,000 healthcare professionals, women’s health champions, members of the public and other stakeholders across the health sector. Meanwhile pleasingly the Government announced the reappointment of Professor Dame Lesley Regan as Women’s Health Ambassador for a further two years who I’ve been working with at DWP on menopause policies.
The Government has launched the ‘Plan for Drivers’ consultation and I’d encourage residents to feed into this. It presents a series of additional reforms to regulations that include requiring at least 50% of any surplus lane rental funds to be spent on repairing local potholes; raising the level of fixed penalty notices (FPNs) that can be issued for five street works offences and allowing overrun charges to apply at weekends and bank holidays. All the details are on my website.
It was great to start the week visiting Burgess Hill Girls to answer questions from their Year 11s and to have the opportunity to explain my working week, sitting days in Parliament, MP’s surgeries, the process of a Bill becoming law, talk about International Women’s Day and much more.
Finally, I joined the launch of Open Doors World Watch List 2024, which many constituents are keen their MPs support. They work with persecuted Churches and annually rank the top 50 countries where Christians sadly face persecution. We heard some of the harrowing experiences of persecuted Christians and the ongoing actions being taken to combat this.