Every year around 10,000 parents have to face the unimaginable grief of losing a child. Nobody expects to bury their own child and when struggling to cope with the worst possible experience they will ever have to face, bereaved parents have the added worry of finding funds for a funeral they never expected to be planning. No parent who has gone through the heartbreaking experience of losing a …
To mark World Mental Health Day, I joined with 160 Labour MPs to ask the Prime Minister that she ring-fences mental health funding.
It’s time the Prime Minister’s words on mental health were translated into action. Ring-fencing mental health funding will get us one step closer to real equality for those with mental health conditions.
You can read the letter below:
Government cuts to public services are bad enough but it is even worse when investment is approved for projects, only to then be delayed and threatened through unnecessary bureaucratic wrangles. That, however, is what is happening on the Bournville Village Trust College Green development on the site of the former Bournville College on Bristol Road South. A new Health and Wellbeing centre is …
In recent weeks, I have received petitions, postcards and hundreds of other correspondence relating to funding, services and reorganisational threats facing our National Health Service. This is the response I have written to constituents. Many of you will recognise that for the last six years Labour have warned about threats of a funding crisis and an increase in unnecessary private investment …
Yesterday I pledged my support for Carers Week 2016. Across the UK there are 6.5m people providing unpaid care for an ill, older or disabled family member or friend, with 11,243 of those in Birmingham Northfield. There are also a lot of people who do not identify themselves as carers because they see what they do as part and parcel of family life, helping to support those closest to them when …
South Birmingham has the lowest bowel cancer screening uptake in the West Midlands with just a 45.98% uptake rate. In fact, I haven’t taken part in bowel cancer screening yet, something which this campaign has prompted me to do.
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.