Oral Answers to Questions
Katrina Murray Excerpts(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lisa Nandy
I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for his question, and I will certainly make sure that I and the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley South (Stephanie Peacock), take that matter up with colleagues in the Treasury to resolve it.
Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lisa Nandy)
I am really proud that this Government have launched the UK’s first ever town of culture competition. I hope Members from across the whole House can get behind this incredible competition, which will bring back into focus parts of our country that have been ignored, disrespected and not celebrated for far too long.
Katrina Murray
I am seeking advice from the Secretary of State. What advice would she give to my local cultural organisations in Cumbernauld, including new and emerging arts and music spaces and the local theatre, which are excited by the prospect of the town of culture competition? How can they engage with and benefit from the competition and ensure that community-led culture is at the heart of any bid?
Lisa Nandy
I thank my hon. Friend for championing those incredible organisations in her constituency. Applications open this week for the town of culture competition. We have deliberately designed this contest so that it will benefit everybody who takes part, helping them to promote what happens in their local areas, with the least bureaucracy possible. We want local organisations to be heard loud and clear as part of the bids. The judging panel will be chaired by the incredible Phil Redmond, and he is designing the competition to ensure that organisations the length and breadth of this country are heard loud and clear.
Youth Services
Katrina Murray Excerpts(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon East (Natasha Irons) for securing this debate, in which we have very much been reminded of the importance of making choices, including political choices. I pay tribute to North Lanarkshire council and the community learning development team, because they have continued to invest in youth work. In the last year alone, 1,200 young people have been involved in localised groups in my community, accessing Scottish Qualifications Authority qualifications that they are not able to do outwith.
I particularly pay tribute to the group of people who are not accessing youth centres and emphasise the importance of being able to engage with young people where they are. Detached youth work is growing again for young people who have no desire to be inside those buildings—the most vulnerable people. Building positive relationships with youth workers can help them to make better-informed choices, reduce risk-taking behaviour, lower complaints of antisocial behaviour, close pathways to criminal activity and make our communities safer. That is happening in the Carbrain part of my constituency.
In the brief time available to me, I also want to talk about Kirkintilloch high school, which has seen the benefit of a youth development worker working alongside teachers. Youth development workers are trusted professionals in a different way, and they work closely with young people who do not engage with the people they have to call “Miss” or “Mr”; they get those relationships, and they should also be valued in this debate.
Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary
Katrina Murray Excerpts(8 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
It is a real privilege to be able to contribute to this debate. It is right that we take the time to pause and reflect on the sacrifices that the great generation made. Not only are the generation that fought in the war mostly no longer with us, but even those who remember the war as a child are getting fewer and fewer by the day. My mum often talks about how her earliest memory was the party and my grandparents dressing up, but only later did she realise what it was. The hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan) reminded us why that generation often did not talk about what they had experienced and the difficulties they had shared.
Before the new town of Cumbernauld was created, the people of the villages that made up my constituency were miners, weavers and farm workers. They all played a massive part in fuelling and feeding the nation and contributing to what we now refer to as the defence industries. We do not remember these people every year on Remembrance Sunday, but it is important to pay tribute to their work today, because they were as big a part of the war effort as those who fought in the armed services.
My family members were those essential workers. My grandfather, Sam Laidlaw, was an engineer in a paper mill that had been repurposed for essential war work. My other granddad, John Murray, was a dairyman whose farmhands were women from the Land Army and prisoners of war who were brought in daily from a camp up the road. My great-aunt, Helen Murray, was a nurse in Clydebank during the two days of the blitz. None of them ever talked about it.
Representing a new town, it is difficult to look at our war memorial and not think of the town as it is today—the seventh biggest in Scotland—instead of as the village that it once was. The names are so familiar and so similar—a full generation of a village wiped out. It would be the same across the nation.
I am glad we have been able to make time today to pay tribute to all those who played a role, whatever that role was. Whether that was in the armed forces, the mills, the farms or the mines, we thank you.