Recently I had the privilege to host a tour of Parliament by group of young people in foster care in Poland who were in the Blyth Valley and the North East. A huge thank you to Lumo trains who sponsored their trip to London with free rail tickets. The children jumped on the train from Morpeth and I met them to take them on a tour of The Palace of Westminster. I was honoured to have this opportunity, answer questions about the history of the building, how parliament works and hopefully they enjoyed my anecdotes and some of the unofficial facts. It’s a privilege of my job to organise a visit like this for children who may have not had the opportunity otherwise. It was a great afternoon and I hope the group enjoyed the rest of their day exploring our capital city. If you are involved in a group in a Blyth Valley and would like to organise a visit to Parliament, please contact my office and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.
As a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and as the MP for a constituency that has higher than average numbers of people serving in the Armed Forces I was delighted to see that pay rises have been agreed for all Services. Annual pay awards and one-off payments bring rises of between 5.8% for officers and £9.7% for junior ranks and accommodation and food charges are being frozen. This is the latest in a series of public sector agreements. The Government has had to manage the public finance whilst also supporting the need to for settlements in the context of higher inflation of household costs.
There are lots of great things happening in Education in Blyth Valley. It was good to see Secretary of State for Education Gillian Keegan, who visited Blyth Valley last year. announcing record funding for schools including the highest ever funding for Blyth Valley schools of over £62.3m. I was copied to a letter from the Regional Schools Commissioner to the Prosper Learning Trust confirming operating funding for the new Gilbert Ward Academy being built in Blyth - an 80-place secondary special school for 11-16 year olds. My Conservative colleagues on Northumberland County Council are funding a new school build for Astley High School and Whytrigg Middle in Seaton Valley and construction is underway on the Energy Central Learning Hub in Blyth.
