This week Parliament broke for summer recess with Richard Holden MP has been working hard before coming home to Walsingham.
- On Monday, the bids for the City of Culture closed with County Durham having submitted. Richard Holden MP came up with the idea, instead of bidding just for the city of Durham, to have the whole county considered in the bid. With his Durham colleagues, Paul Howell MP and Dehenna Davison MP, Richard Holden MP last week met with officials from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, who confirmed to them that the County of Culture would qualify as part of the bid. You can follow the campaign and the coverage here.
- On Tuesday, Richard Holden MP asked the Home Office Minister for Women, Victoria Atkins MP, to consider his amendments NC1 and NC2 to end virginity testing and hymenoplasty. These practices, still legal, are not based in scientific fact and harm young women across the UK. Mr Holden has long campaigned to make them illegal and his amendments this week will do just that. Richard Holden MP said “I am delighted that MPs from all parties have backed my new clauses. I call on the Government to finally end these terrible practices for good” You can read more about it here.
- Finally, on Wednesday, Parliament sat late for the second reading of the Nationality and Borders Bill, which passed. Mr Holden stood up to back the bill, which will bring about a sensible immigration policy based on the UK's need and not how much people, with no claim to asylum, can pay to be smuggled. You can watch him here.
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