What has your new MP been up to in his first two months Steve Witherden answers your questions
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00:00It's a horrible situation to have to be in, you know, the new government coming in and
00:05inheriting an abysmal financial situation from the Conservative government.
00:10It would be lovely for any politician to do what Boris Johnson did and, you know, promise
00:1640 new hospitals, but it's very important that there's no more trusonomics, there's
00:25no more promises that can't be properly funded.
00:29I did listen to the concerns of the constituents.
00:33I signed Early Day Motion 115 before the vote, which was calling for a delay, calling for
00:41it not to be implemented straight away, and also to set up a Pensioner Poverty Taskforce.
00:47I have signed Early Day Motion 169, which is calling for a pension credit threshold
00:54to be lowered so more people can still access the winter fuel allowance.
01:00It's been a difficult time, to be honest, because you probably saw that my mother passed
01:05away the day after Parliament opened.
01:10It was nice, you know, that I got there, got to be with her, because she was very pleased
01:14to have seen me elected, you know, only a few days before.
01:17I'd planned to come straight back down, but everyone said, no, don't, stay, you know,
01:23I've got a young family, a 10-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son, and it was important
01:27that I stayed with them.
01:29But I think it would be daunting at the best of times, you know, starting a new job like
01:32that, a long, long way away from home.
01:36But as well as being daunting, it's also been really exciting to speak about the air ambulance,
01:41which obviously was a terrible thing that we lost that.
01:47And Montgomery, Sheeran, Glyndwr, Labour, Constituency Labour Party did oppose that.
01:54I've been liaising with the group, working on getting the judicial review, and I'll be
01:59meeting with them, I'm hoping to meet with them next week.
02:02The all-party parliamentary group, the APPG, on air ambulances, and I've already been elected
02:08as an officer on that APPG.
02:13So there's a lot of work to be done on that, and that's something I'm still hearing from
02:16constituents, you know, what can we do about the air ambulance, you know, so obviously
02:21we're going to exhaust every avenue we can on that topic.
02:24I attended a meeting in Llanidloes Church, because Llanidloes Hospital is the one which
02:30is proposed to be downgraded.
02:33So I've written a long consultation response opposing that downgrading.
02:40Something that we will be fighting as a community, it's not something we're willing, you know,
02:46to tolerate.
02:47We're already seeing so many constituents having to go out of constituency, sometimes
02:52to Bronglais in Caradigian, but more often than that, out of the country, you know, to
02:58England, to Shrewsbury, to Gabowin, to Telford.
03:02So yeah, that is really one of the main priorities for me as a constituency MP, that was something
03:08that was raised numerous times on the general election campaign, and since my election by
03:15constituents.
03:16And yeah, big concerns, and I have written formally to WES Streeting about that, and
03:25I've shared that letter with constituents, outlining some of the concerns that I have
03:31about a blanket ban on puberty blockers.
03:36My political awakening, in a way, was many years ago, a campaign to save a village primary
03:44school in the north of the constituency, in Pont Vador.
03:48If a community loses these spaces, if you lose the school, you know, you lose the community
03:54hub, or the post office, it can have a really detrimental effect on rural life, because
04:03so much of what we do as a community is centred around those spaces, so it's fundamentally
04:08important that we do absolutely everything in our power to keep those spaces.
04:12If there are any that constituents are concerned about, I want to hear from you, I want you
04:16to let me know, and I will do everything in my power to amplify your campaign.
04:21It's absolutely horrific what's going on over there, and whenever I'm privileged enough
04:27to have a platform to speak, any platform, including this one here today, I use it to
04:34call again for an immediate ceasefire.
04:37That's my position, and I've been consistent on that, and I'll remain consistent.
04:41We did ban arms export licences to Israel, I believe it was 30.
04:53One of the things that I've done is I've been a signatory of an open letter which was written
05:00by my fellow MP, Zahra Sultana, who wrote a letter calling for F-35 jet components to