Judith Cummins MP: Putin's attack 'deliberate, unprovoked, and unjustifiable'

LAST week, President Putin launched a deliberate, unprovoked, and unjustifiable attack on Ukraine, a sovereign independent country.

We must be clear that President Putin’s actions are an aggressive violation of international law which breaks the fundamental principles of the United Nations charter.

Bradford has a thriving Ukrainian expatriate community who I know are deeply concerned about the safety of friends and family abroad and my thoughts are with them and the people of Ukraine.

The British Government has had and will continue to have Labour’s full support in providing defensive, economic, and political measures to help Ukraine defend itself.

Labour pressed for the United Kingdom to use sanctions to the fullest possible extent against those linked to President Putin and the Russian Government’s interests, after the UK’s initial measures of sanctions went nowhere near far enough.

At the same time, we must prepare for the consequences of these sanctions and take steps to reduce shocks on the energy and financial markets, particularly as we are already facing a crisis in cost of living at home.

We must take back control of our economy and break our economic dependency on not only Russia, but also China, so that our ability to help Ukraine defend itself, and our ability to prevent this happening in other places is not compromised by our over reliance on Russian money in the city of London, imported fossil fuels or by allowing the Chinese Government to buy our infrastructure and vital UK national assets.

Closer to home, this is the first week in just under two years where Bradford has not been under any restrictions due to the pandemic.

This is thanks to the public’s uptake of the vaccine programme, with over three-quarters of the adult population having had at least one dose, we are now emerging from the tunnel back to normality.

People are looking forward to being able to make new treasured memories with family and friends, and to catch up on the many opportunities that have been missed over the past two years. Now is a time for cautious optimism.

Of course, we must still be careful. ‘Living with Covid’ does not mean pretending the virus has gone away. With the ending of legal restrictions, Boris Johnson asks the British public to use ‘common sense’.

However, I put more trust in the British people to do the right thing than in I do in the Prime Minister and his friends. But, I am concerned about how the public can make an informed decision about what is right for them when access to free testing and support for self-isolating is also coming to an end.

Common sense says you still need to easily find out whether you’re ill with coronavirus or just a common cold, and that workers still need support to stay at home while infectious.

The NHS has led the way in saving lives over the last few years and it is an institution we are rightly proud of. However, ease of access to basic appointments remains a fundamental issue across the service.

Not a week goes by where a constituent doesn’t get in touch with me about problems getting a dental or GP appointment.

I recently visited a local GP and saw with my own eyes as the switch board lit up in the morning to thousands of calls, each one a concerned patient scrambling for limited appointments to discuss their health concerns.

Similarly, people are struggling to get NHS dental appointments. Even before the pandemic, there was barely enough capacity for half the population to see their NHS dentist once every two years.

Restrictions have caused the loss of another 40 million slots – that’s a full year’s worth of appointments. I recently held a debate in Parliament to challenge the Government on this.

As the Government relaxes the last of the restrictions, it is not just about catching up on lost time; now is the time to invest in improving every-day access to GPs and dentists and bring it to a world-leading standard.

Finally, I have been continuing work to tackle the blight of anti-social quads in Bradford.

I’m pleased to have secured a date to bring my bill curtailing their dangerous and improper use on our streets to Parliament later this month.

Over the past few weeks, I have met with residents, police, the agricultural sector, and national road safety charities such as Brake and the Royal Society for the Prevention of

Accidents – all of whom are backing my bill to bring in legislation to mandate wearing helmets, registering of all quad vehicles and required installation of immobilisers.
I

want to push the Government to stop quads being the menace they are on our streets.