Wednesday 24 August 2021 On Thursday last week I visited the Gurkha hunger strike close to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, that was being conducted by retired servicemen Dhan Gurung and Gyanraj Rai, and Pushpa Rana Ghale, a Gurkha widow who had travelled from Nepal. This was the thirteenth day of their strike, and […]
Wednesday 18 August 2021 Over the last two weeks we have watched with increasing dismay, the rapid collapse of the government of Afghanistan and the return of the Taliban to power. For many of our current and former service personnel, this will have been a heavy blow. I think in particular of the Royal Gurkha […]
Article by Jonathan Reilly for The Sun - published 13 August 2021 Social media giants have been accused of doing nothing to stop the hosting of Jake Davison’s hate videos before his deadly rampage. Davison had posted YouTube clips detailing his gun obsession and his hatred of women. They were finally taken down yesterday after YouTube said he […]
Wednesday 11 August 2021 Just before the start of the parliamentary summer recess I was elected to chair a special Joint Select Committee composed of members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, to scrutinise the Government’s proposed Online Safety Bill. The committee will hold hearings in the autumn and present its findings […]
Wednesday 4 August 2021 This week the Government confirmed that residents in the Folkestone and Hythe constituency, as well as in many other parts of Kent, will benefit from further investment from the Project Gigabit fund. Over the next few years the government has committed £5billion to levelling up internet access across the UK, and […]
Written for the Daily Telegraph - published 29 July 2021 The senior Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth wrote in a now infamous internal company memo “the ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good”. The trouble the tech […]
Article by Rhiannon Williams for The I Paper - published 29 July 2021 Social media companies must be stopped from making money through illegal and harmful content and held accountable for failing to remove it from their platforms, a top digital MP has warned. Damian Collins, former chair of House of Commons DCMS Select Committee that […]
Article by James Warrington for City AM - published 29 July 2021 A joint committee of MPs and lords has been launched today to scrutinise controversial government plans to tackle online harms. The new super committee will be tasked with seeking views on the online safety bill, which was published in draft form in May. […]
Wednesday 28 July 2021 Last Wednesday I joined Lewis Biggs, the curator of the 2020 Folkestone Triennial, for a tour of some of the new artworks for this year’s show. The Triennial had been delayed since last autumn, but now makes its return with some spectacular new artworks, that are not only talking points in […]
Article by Sam Williams for KentOnline - published 21 July 2021 More people have crossed the Channel so far this year than in the whole of 2020 after hundreds more asylum seekers arrived yesterday and more area arriving today. In response Home Secretary Priti Patel vowed yet more action, with £54 million sent to France […]