Josh Fenton-Glynn MP Calder Valley: No greater honour than representing my home

These first two weeks have been a blur lessons for new MPs, from how to set up your parliamentary office, to the rules on how to speak.

As I write this I have not even been MP for Calder Valley for two weeks, it has been an immense honour and an amazing experience. Having been born and brought up here there is no greater honour than representing my home. Over the years I have knocked on thousands of doors from Brighouse to Todmorden and in the last few weeks of this campaign I had the opportunity to speak to so many people on the doorstep about their hopes for their lives and the community. I take seriously my responsibility to not just be the MP for people who voted for me but for everyone in Calder Valley.

Josh Fenton-Glynn MP writes: The Labour government have already made a flying start, from cancelling the ineffective and purposefully cruel Rwanda scheme, creating a national wealth fund, restoring targets for new homes and holding talks with water companies to end the sewage crisis and talks with the BMA to end doctors strikes. The past two weeks have exposed the legacy that we have been left with and the job we have to rebuild our country.

In a similar vein I’m determined to hit the ground running for Calder Valley. As I try to set up a constituency office to deal with the hundreds of casework and policy emails I’ve already received.

I’ve already been in touch with the new Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, to ask about funding for our local schools and am talking to the council and combined authority about transport issues.

While I’m trying to make an impact for my community, I have also been trying to get to grips with the job of being a Member of Parliament. These first two weeks have been a blur lessons for new MPs, from how to set up your parliamentary office, to the rules on how to speak. Parliament has a number of strange rules and traditions, many of which make it harder for the public to relate to what is happening. I hope that this new intake of parliamentarians, one of the biggest in history, gives us an opportunity to shake up some of those traditions and make the House of Commons more understandable and relatable to the public.

Getting used to the place and it’s rules has been a bit like having my first day at a new school… although the Palace of Westminster is very different to the buildings of Calder High School where I started 30 years ago! One thing that was familiar to me as an old Calder High student however was the new MP for Stoke on Trent South Dr Allison Gardner, who by a very strange coincidence used to be my biology teacher at Calder High! Alison is just as lovely and passionate as I remember her being as a teacher. And it is a testament to the new MPs we have that so many have experience across a number of different jobs and careers.

I’m writing this before the Kings Speech, but what I know of what’s coming is a programme for governing and rebuilding this country. Over 30 bills from planning to the NHS. My time as a councillor showed me the immense power of public services to make people’s lives better. But also that when they fail they leave many behind. Labour went to the country at the start of this month making clear we need a decade of national renewal. And it is clear from the conversations I’ve had with constituents over the past months that people feel that too. We are already getting to work.