The UK death rate now stands at 36,042. My thoughts are with every victim, their families and their friends.
NHS surcharge Following Keir Starmer’s intervention at Prime Ministers Questions, the Government have U-turned on their policy of charging our NHS heroes the immigration surcharge. I hope the Prime Minister will now extend it to all Migrant Workers bringing him fully in line with Labour Policy.
A cleaner in a Supermarket is no less valuable than a cleaner in a Hospital.
Every Thursday we go out and clap for our carers. Many of them are risking their lives for the sake of all. It’s wrong that care workers coming from abroad and working on our frontline should have to pay a surcharge of hundreds of pounds to use the NHS.
Cyber Security
A reminder to please be vigilant for cybercrime as we do more of our communication online. Unfortunately, this has been on the increase since the start of lockdown. We’ve seen many ‘phishing’ incidents where criminals send emails purporting to be from somebody else, in an attempt to trick the recipient. Please be vigilant for anything that doesn’t look right. In particular, please check the header of emails to see if the email address is legitimate and matches the name of the sender.
Care Homes
Over the weekend 3 new care homes have reported Covid-19 outbreaks, bringing the total to 34 care homes with active outbreaks. Although the numbers are coming down compared to a few weeks ago, this remains a very live issue and I expect an increase in reported outbreaks. There has now been some Government intervention which is a good thing and I welcome. But we were warning about this crisis for a long time and many of our care home deaths simply did not have to happen.
Walking and Cycling in Leeds
I would also like to thank your constituent for their suggestions. We are encouraging residents of Leeds to comment and share ideas and have recently set up a commonplace platform that should make this a much easier process – click herehttps://leedscovid19transport.commonplace.is/ for the link.