Former
Welcome to my website and blog.
You can read a bit more about who I am and what makes me tick here. A summary of the work I did when I was Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 can also be found here.
The older posts on here date from my time as an MP but I have continued to blog since leaving Parliament.
The opening paragraphs of my blog posts appear at the bottom of this page in reverse date order. The “Read on” buttons take you to what I have written in full. My posts below also contain links to articles I have written and which have been published elsewhere, together with posts imported from my own Facebook page.
To view posts on a specific subject, from both during and after my time in Parliament, please click one of the buttons below.
These are the main subjects on which I’ve written. Click here to view the full list of categories.
Here is the link to my Bluesky account, and here is the link to my Twitter/X account. You can also view my Facebook page and LinkedIn profile.
Click on ‘Contact’ below to get in touch with me.
This feed refreshes intermittently. Please log in to X (Twitter) to view my newest tweets in full.
Abolishing patient watchdog leaves NHS ‘marking own homework’, councils warn
In otherwise wide ranging interview with Health Secretary, James Murray, regrettable that @BBCr4today didn’t ask why the new Health Bill, to be debated today will scrap independent patient and public voice in health &social care. Here’s why govt is wrong
Perceptiveness and blinkers: thoughts on Tony Blair’s agenda for a “Radical Centre” in UK politics
Eid Mubarak to all celebrating Eid Al-Adha
Last month, I wrote about the haunting photo of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya standing alone and unarmed in front of advancing Israeli tanks amid ruins around his hospital in Gaza. I called the post “What courage looks like.” Soon after the photo was taken, Dr Abu Safiya was abducted by Israeli soldiers and taken out of Gaza. He was held in solitary confinement for 24 days and he is still in Israeli …
I was privileged to be one of those representing Remembering Srebrenica at Holocaust Memorial Day, hosted by Birmingham City Council today. 2025 is a special year for commemoration – marking both the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the 30th anniversary of the genocide near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica when over 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were …
Few people will have been unmoved by the pictures of joy and anticipation which have been broadcast from Gaza in the past twenty-four hours. After fifteen months of horror at a scale that those of us in the rest of the world will mercifully never experience, there is the chance that the death and destruction may be coming to an end.
Unarmed and facing Israeli tanks amid devastation next to his hospital, one Palestinian doctor shows the world what courage looks like. It is a photo that will come to symbolise the sheer enormity of Israel’s assault on healthcare in Gaza and its attempt to empty the north of Gaza of Palestinians altogether. It is ethnic cleansing and it is deliberate policy. It’s not even secret. It is called …
“I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what is happening in Gaza now is a genocide…We don’t teach about genocides in order to realise it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.” Amos Goldberg, Professor of Holocaust Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Having posted a personal story about my passion for motorsport a couple of weeks ago, I am again back onto that theme with this one. It is about something else currently on TV: the drama series ‘Senna’ now streaming on Netflix. I begin by discussing the first three episodes – but I’ve since added a postscript on the rest of the series.
It is no secret that I have been nutty about motorsport all my life. No surprise, then, that I am currently glued to the four-part docuseries ‘Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story’, which is being screened on BBC Two. For me it brings back special personal memories, as someone who was around at the time, albeit with no more than a brief cameo role in what happened.
You always think things cannot get any worse for the Palestinians. But every year they do. (An extract from an article originally published by Labour List.)
On Sunday, as I have done for thirty-two of the past thirty-five years, I attended the Remembrance Day service hosted by the Austin Branch of the Royal British Legion in Northfield, Birmingham. Every year my thoughts turn to visits I have made to Commonwealth war graves both in the UK and in other parts of the world. All those visits have been both poignant and personally moving. None more so …
Health and social care services in Birmingham are failing to provide the care that many children and young people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and/or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) need and deserve, with parents and carers reporting waits of a year or more for assessment and diagnosis, problems getting referrals and a lack of support to help them care for their child. Read …
...
This is a statement I made in my capacity as Healthwatch Birmingham Chair, which was published on the Healthwatch Birmingham website: Healthwatch Birmingham shares the widespread concerns about Birmingham City Council’s (BCC) decision to close four day centres. Our research underlines how valuable day centres are to the often vulnerable people who use them and their carers. They provide important …
I was Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 and a former Shadow Transport Minister. I now chair Healthwatch in Birmingham and Solihull, and the West Midlands Board of Remembering Srebrenica. I also work as a public affairs consultant. I am an effective community advocate and stakeholder alliance builder with a passion for human rights. I am a trustee of the Balfour Project charity and of Citizens Advice Birmingham, and a former Chair of Medical Aid for Palestinians.
