The public meeting on the potential to deliver a new nuclear power station at Dungeness will be held a week on Saturday, on 22nd January. This follows the meeting I held with the Energy Minister Charles Hendry before Christmas, along with Shepway District Council. The meeting will be attended by officials from the Department for Energy and will give us the opportunity to put our case to them. Please let me know if you would like more information about attending this meeting. Early next week I will also be meeting at the Department for Energy with Natural England and representatives from Kent County Council and Shepway to discuss how we can try to establish a positive agenda that would enable us to take a new power station at Dungeness forward. I hope to be able to update readers on the progress from that meeting in next week’s column.
On Wednesday this week in parliament we are considering the final stages of the Postal Services Bill. I served on the committee of the House of Commons that studied and debated this Bill in the run up to Christmas. It allows for the sale of the Royal Mail, but not the Post Office which will remain publically owned, but in time might be taken over by its employees in a model of mutual ownership similar to that found in companies like John Lewis or the Co-op. In the week before Christmas I visited the sorting offices in Folkestone, Hythe and New Romney to thank the Royal Mail staff for all this hard work in getting out the post, particularly in the snow and icy conditions. They are a hard working and dedicated team, but we need to find ways of bringing more investment into the Royal Mail, particularly as a time when the number of letters being sent is falling. Other countries, like Germany and Holland that have gone down this road already have seen substantial private investment in their postal networks. As a result they are expanding, whereas in this country we seem to have been fighting a constant rear guard action to protect the Royal Mail and keep post offices open. We are also going to guarantee as the Bill leaves the House of Commons that whoever owns the Royal Mail in the future, that The Queen’s head will remain proudly displayed on our stamps.
Last Friday I had the chance to spend some time at two of our local primary schools. First at Christ Church in Brockman Road, Folkestone where as well as meeting the staff and pupils I received some excellent questioning by members of the School Council on matters as wide ranging as student fees and sport in schools. Later in the day I joined a meeting of the School Council at St Mary’s Primary in Warren Road, Folkestone. As well as answering another set of thoughtful and intelligent questions I joined the school for their end of day act of worship, and also had a tour of their new building which is due to open later this month.