WITH yet more strikes last week, legislation to tackle the unfair disruption to people’s lives caused by strike action had its second reading last week.

The Strike (Minimum Service Levels) Bill will ensure that the necessary number of workers in the public sector are given work notices on the day of industrial action in order to keep services running. 

If the unions fail to take reasonable steps to ensure that all work notices have been complied with, they will face financial penalties. I am puzzled as to why Labour should be determined to repeal any such legislation if the right balance is achieved – surely, they should want people to be safe. 

The Online Safety Bill was back in Parliament this week, addressing some amendments the Government had tabled before the Christmas break to ensure that there is greater accountability placed on larger tech companies to protect young people online. The Government also removed the ‘legal but harmful’ elements of the Bill, replacing them with a ‘triple shield’ of protections that gives adult users greater choice about what they see online and who they interact with, while upholding users’ right to free expression online. 

Our exit from the European Union has allowed us greater freedom over all our legislation. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill does exactly this. It allows us to correct our statute book so that we no longer have laws which have been integrated into our legislation directly or indirectly by virtue of our EU membership which we do not want to keep. These laws will be removed by the end of this year unless we chose to identify any we wish to retain until 2026.

The misconception around environmental or maternity rights simply vanishing at the end of 2023 is not true. They will be maintained in UK law and the Government is committed to that. We were elected on a manifesto to get Brexit done, and that is what this does.

In last week’s column, I spoke about needing to tackle the recruitment and retention problem in the NHS, as a way of getting the service working again. I made these points in greater detail in a Westminster Hall debate on the need to train more doctors. 

There are particular barriers in rural communities, we have an increasingly ageing population and a problem with attraction because qualified doctors tend to want to stay where they were trained. We need more rural medical schools, specific rural training opportunities and for the curriculum to contain adequate rural content or experience to make rural medicine better understood and more attractive as a career option.

Scotland are already ahead of the game with specific training programmes. Universities in Dundee and St Andrews have courses where, in terms of content and practice, 50% is focused on working in rural locations. The rural areas of Scotland and England are not too dissimilar, there is no reason why the same approach should not be adopted in areas like ours. 

Recruiting people who live in rural areas, is another way we can meet the health challenges rural communities face head on. It will also help with the high vacancy rates for doctors that we currently have in the South West. Rural and urban areas have different requirements, a one size fits all approaches cannot be the future.

I also met with John Hart, leader of Devon County Council, to discuss the latest funding settlement from central government. While a generous settlement, the council will still have to do things differently by innovating and thinking smartly particularly in how they deliver Children’s Services and Adult Social Care which are high spending areas. Key local services must be retained including rural transport and children’s centres. 

While the government has enabled local councils to increase Council tax, I have made it clear that this should not be a given. People are struggling with the cost of living and any increase must be kept to a minimum. 

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