We were very please to host a "Meet Your MP' evening on Friday 21st October when Dr. Dan Poulter, the MP for North Ipswich and Central Suffolk came along to St. Martin's Church for the evening.
The local villagers were met by the Church Wardens, Mrs. Monica Pipe and Jim Punton with a welcome cup of coffee.
Bill Pipe, the Chairman of Tuddenham St. Martin Parish Council introduced Dr. Poulter to a small but representative audience from the village.
Dr Poulter started out by introducing himself and giving us a short résumé. His experiences when first attending the Houses of Parliament were particularly amusing.He then went on to discuss some of the issues of real importance such as the state of the NHS in the constituency and also the provision of broadband to the rural areas, both of which are currently giving some concern. During the parliamentary summer recess, Dr. Poulter went back to work at the James Paget Hospital in Gorleston, working in the Accident and Emergency department so is very aware of some of the issues surrounding NHS services. He is fighting against the downgrading of Ipswich Hospital due to the moving of some critical services to Colchester, Norwich and Cambridge. With practicing doctors and consultants in the audience there was a detailed discussion of some of the issues which are of concern to the local community.
He followed on by saying that he was heavily involved in the new Rural Broadband project and expected to see some good results in Suffolk by 2015 at the latest. It was pointed out to him that Ipswich doesn't even have access to the latest 20mb broadband that other towns and cities have, but he stated that he thought that this would change within a reasonable time frame.
He is giving time to supporting local food production within the county and is working hard to get the labelling of British produced food to be the only produce to carry the 'British' label - currently, it only requires that food is packed here to be eligible.
He then opened up the discussion to the audience where discussions ranged over the following topics:
* The Government's approach to the problems of the Equitable Life collapse
* Concerns over integration of care in rural areas
* The change to have health care professionals in charge of services and not management experts
* Issues over Europe and the likely outcome of the forthcoming vote of a referendum on the EU
* Changes to Human Rights legislation with decisions seeming to be made by un-elected judges rather than by elected politicians
* The likely effects of a UK Bill Of Rights - he thinks that this wouldn't fundamentally change anything
* The extension of Green Energy production with an emphasis on offshore activities and greater efforts in the area of individual homes with regard to insulation and energy use
* Child Protection where he has been directly involved with local social services to ensure good and fair outcomes and where he has achieved good results since becoming an MP
* Youth Crime where he has been active in visiting schools and after discussion with head teachers, he feels that better provision of after school activities could really help in reducing this problem.
* School discipline, where he is keen for teachers to be able to intervene more effectively without fear of prosecution.
After a good two hours of discussions, the meeting was wound up by Bill Pipe calling for a vote of thanks to Dr. Poulter for giving up his time on a dark Friday evening and coming to our village with this opportunity to get to know him better
