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.
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Real elation that every living Israeli hostage is now free. Even one still held would have continued the nightmare. It carries on for many Palestinians Israel has abducted. I wrote about Dr Husam Abu Safiya in February . Why is he still in captivity?
Last week, our chair @richardburden27 published on his own website some personal reflections about what Remembering Srebrenica has meant for him this year.

Israeli forces are said to have dropped more explosives on Gaza than fell on London, Dresden and Hamburg combined in the Second World War. The level of destruction is hard to fathom as is the humanitarian suffering.
Our Foreign Affairs Correspondent @SecKermani looks at the…
Some personal reflections on what Remembering Srebrenica means in 2025 – for Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the wider world and here in the UK..

Poor old George Osborne. His government’s privatisation of Royal Mail seems to be hitting his own department even harder than the rest of us. Can you imagine – a letter he sent from his office in the House of Commons to another MP’s office took no less than five days to arrive? And guess what? The office which did not receive the letter for so long was mine.
Thursday’s rejection by Birmingham City Council of Sainsburys’ plan to build a new store on the car park of the Navigation Inn in Kings Norton is a tribute to the efforts of local people and businesses. A plan by the Co-op to build a supermarket facing The Green has also been knocked back. Reports in the press suggest that the Co-op may come forward with a re-designed scheme. Labour’s local …
Ludicrous. A lottery. These are just some of the terms being used to describe the Government’s approach to roads maintenance, after the Public Accounts Committee issued a damning report into funding arrangements this week. The all-party committee of MPs responsible for scrutinising public spending have concluded this Government’s stop-start approach to roads maintenance funding is wasting …
People from the local Labour Party in Northfield were out with me today in support of the NHS. I say “local” because the Conservative Party are holding their national conference in Birmingham and their London HQ is boasting that they are going to bus large numbers of people attending the conference from different parts of the country down to Northfield on Sunday afternoon. Their job …
Ahead of the recall of Parliament tomorrow, I want to update local people about my view on IS and the current situation in the Middle East. Like many British people, I opposed the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. I believe that some of the chaos we now see in that part of the world today is, at least partly, a legacy of that action. But I do not believe that affects the urgency of the situation in …
Just a short note to keep you up to date with where things are up to with The North Worcestershire Golf Course issue. Last Friday (19th September) I attended a public meeting with Bloor Homes which was organised by the Council's Longbridge Ward Committee. @b31Voices tweeted regular reports from the meeting as it was taking place but I thought It may also be helpful for me to do a round-up of what …
Thanks to businesses and residents in Kings Norton for the comments you have sent to me about the planning applications from Sainsburys and the Coop to build new stores next to or near Kings Norton Green.
I know many Northfield residents will have been worried by this article which has appeared in the Birmingham Mail. So I wanted to write to update local people about the action I and Chair of Birmingham’s Northfield District Committee, Labour Councillor Brett O’Reilly, have taken in response. We have called for an investigation into the issue of the Spectrum Swimming Club and …
Lots of local people continue to contact me about the future of Northfield's leisure facilities. For the latest update please read this article on B31 Voices about the City Council's Cabinet Meeting on the 15 September 2014 - at which the future of the pool and leisure centre was discussed. After the recent local consultation and residents meeting chaired by Labour Councillor and Northfield …
As Labour’s Shadow Transport Minister and MP for Birmingham Northfield, I am pleased to be hosting: Dinner with Mary Creagh MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Transport Thursday 20th November, 7.00. for 7.30pm Edgbaston Priory Club, Sir Harry’s Road, Birmingham, B15 2UZ Mary Creagh was first elected Member of Parliament for Wakefield in May 2005. She had previously served for a number of …
I wanted to write and update residents about what is proving to be a long line of smears being put about both on social media and in the Bromsgrove Standard newspaper by a Tory Candidate in Northfield. This time it’s an allegation from the Conservative candidate that that local Labour Councillors and the local MP (I’m assuming she is having a go at me rather than the Conservative MP for …
As the Referendum on Scottish Independence has got closer, the words “solidarity” and “self- determination” have come into my head time and time again. I guess like many on the Left in England, for a long time I reckoned my commitment to principle of self-determination meant that I should hold back. Surely, I thought, independence was a matter for people in Scotland to decide, not something for …
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.
